FIGHTING MASCOT 




TOMMTK 




Class 

Book 

Gopiglit]!^?- 



CQEXRIGHT DEPGSm 



THE FIGHTING MASCOT 




I had got liim! I had got him! 



{Pcuje 35) 



THE 
FIGHTING MASCOT 

THE TRUE STORY OF A BOY SOLDIER 

BY 

THE BOY SOLDIER HIMSELF 
THOMAS JOSEPH KEHOE 

Rfm., No. 203144, 5th King's Liverpool Regiment 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY 

CLYDE FORSYTHE 




NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1918 



40 



'•r 



Copyright, 1918 
By DODD, mead AND COMPANY, Inc. 



OCT 



VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY 

BiMaMAMTON AND NEW YO«K 




©CI.A501965 



S FOREWORD 

Bit hy hit Vve told this story of my adventures to 
recruiting meetings and Red Cross rallies and to lads 
I've met here and there on land and sea — told what- 
ever scrap of it came into my head and let the rest 
go for another time. 

I never could piece it all together the way it ought 
to he, and I was never a good hand at the writing. 
So I've found a writing man who knows a thing or 
two about how to straighten it all out and how to put 
the first part at the beginning and the last part at 
the end and the fighting and the talking and the rest 
in where they belong, while he drops what don't mat- 
ter much into his scrap basket. 

He's dropped more into that basket than I wanted 
him to, some fine songs I wrote for him from my own 
head having gone there; but the story's all here, with 
the hard words spelled right, and everything clear 
and sensible, which is more than ever I could have 
done myself. 

Thomas Joseph Kbhoe, Efm. 

P.S. — The writing man's name is E. L. Bacon, if 
anybody should wish to know. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Squeezing in Through the Band ... 1 

II Into the Big Noise 9 

III In Dead Men's Alley 17 

IV The Colonel Gets a Warning .... 23 
V The Germans Come .30 

VI The Lost Patrol 40 

VII Ghosts of the Night '49 

VIII Heroes and Cowards 57 

IX "Hard Luck" Prophesies Again ... 66 

X "Give 'Em THE Bayonet!" 74 

XI It's the Fighting Fifth 84 

XII The Mad Woman of Ypres 93 

XIII Soldiers Three 100 

XIV Bombs 108 

XV Groping in the Dark 113 

XVI The Low-Down Cur 119 

XVII BoNESEY Becomes a Hero 126 

XVIII The Man FROM America 134 

XIX On the March -140 

XX Sinking in the Bog . . . • • • -146 

XXI The Battle of Flanders 154 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XXII Victims op the Huns 163 

XXIII An Enemy Leaves Us 171 

XXIV The Fight in the Stone House . . . 176 
XXV An Old Pal "Goes West'' 189 

XXVI Into the Trenches Again 200 

XXVII I Meet "Israel Hands" 207 

XXVIII "Good-Bye, Old Pals!" 215 

XXIX I Meet the King 223 

XXX The Last Adventure 229 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



I had got him! I had got him! (Page 35) Frontispiece 

PACING 
PAGE 

One of our lads brought the butt of a gun down on 

his head 78 



I felt the mud pulling me down 152 

"Put the steel to 'im! Put the steel to 'im!" ... 182 



1 



THE FIGHTING MASCOT 



THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

CHAPTER I 

SQUEEZING IN THROUGH THE BAND 

I'M glad I never could learn to play a bugle. 
If ever I had caught the trick of it I should 
be blowing it yet, with never a look-in at the 
fighting. 

^^If we was fightin' the Germans with 
chunes,'' the Bandmaster told me, ^^we'd have 
ye in the front trenches, me lad, and there 'd be a 
Hun drop dead every time ye gave a toot. ' ' 

I got to the front trenches all right, but not 
with a bugle. I carried a gun. I was three 
years too young for the firing line — just turned 
sixteen at my first battlei — but the Colonel 
couldn^t stand my bugling any longer. 

I was a Liverpool lad before I went to war. 
There's good seafaring blood in my veins, and 
I might have gone to sea myself. But my 
mother would say: 

'* Stick to the dry land, Tom. Your father 
1 



2 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

was a sailor man, and now he's gone to the 
bottom, and his ship with him. Stick to the dry- 
land, my lad. There's too many dangers at 
sea." 

So I've stuck to it. But I've been through 
more dangers on land and been closer to death 
a hundred times than ever I should have been 
on the water. There's a bullet hole in my thigh 
and the scar from the butt of a German's gun 
on my head, and I should never have got them 
if I had followed the sea, the days of pirates 
being over. 

My mother and my step-father live at 15 
Amelia Street, and the windows of our home 
look out over the big pier's head on the Eiver 
Mersey, where the liners come in. There's 
a little room up under the roof in that house 
where many's the night I've sat propped up in 
bed reading *^ Treasure Island" by candle light. 
I'll not soon forget the awful shock it gave me 
when my mother would glide in and take the 
candle away just when the pirates were doing 
their worst. 

I read that grand old book so many times 
that I shouldn't wonder if I could recite it back- 
ward if I tried. The more I read it the more 



SQUEEZING 3 

I longed to sail away with a ship and see the 
world. But, remembering what my mother had 
said, I made up my mind that I should have to 
look for my adventures on land if there were 
any for me to find at all. If only I had lived 
in the days of Jim Hawkins and Long John 
Silver there would have been plenty of them, 
but I was afraid I had been born about one 
hundred and fifty years too late for such things. 

That^s what I was thinking just before the 
big war broke loose, which brought more ad- 
ventures than Jim Hawkins ever dreamed of. 
But how could I know the war was coming! 

I meant to get into that war, even though I 
was too young. It was too good to miss, and 
there might not be another in a life-time. I 
had blown a bugle a few times — just about 
enough to make a noise through it — and I 
thought that if they weren't very particular 
about how the music sounded I might get into 
the band of the Fifth King's Liverpool Eegi- 
ment, where Billy Clegg, who lived almost next 
door to us, was a rifleman. That would be a 
step to getting into the fighting ranks. 

I managed it without much trouble, and went 
with the battalion to Camp Oswestry, the train- 



4 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

ing camp near Cardiff. Nobody asked me 
whether I was much of a bugler and there was 
no reason why I should tell them. They would 
find out soon enough. And they did. The 
Colonel said I was the worst bugler in the serv- 
ice of the King, and what the Bandmaster said 
was even worse. 

By that time some of the riflemen wanted me 
as a mascot to bring them luck, and they did 
their best to help me get into the ranks. I 
weighed only ninety-six pounds and my height 
was only four feet ten, so it was hard to con- 
vince the Colonel that I was big enough, but 
the more he heard my bugling the more he 
seemed to like the idea of my carrying a gun. 
And at last he made a rifleman of me. I had 
to throw in three years to my age for good 
measure. I hope I may be forgiven for that 
one, for my mother brought me up to tell the 
truth. Anyway, it was in a good cause. 

In May, 1917, a batch of men was being made 
up for France, and our battalion was chosen. 
I took the train for Liverpool to say good-bye 
to my mother and my step-father and my 
friends. 

It was hard at home to say good-bye, for my 



SQUEEZING 5 

mother cried over me and said she couldn't see 
why I wanted to go and fight at my age and 
come home with bullet holes through me and 
that it had been better had I gone to sea. But 
she screwed up her courage when it came time 
for me to go, and when I left the house she came 
running after me, threw her arms around me 
and tried to keep back the tears. As I marched 
down the street she stood in the door and cried 
after me words that came into my mind many 
a time after that: 

*^Be brave, have faith in God — and come back 
home!'' 

That night we crossed England on the train, 
and the following morning rolled into Folke- 
stone on the Channel. It was May 16, 1917 — 
my sixteenth birthday. That day we sailed for 
France. 

At the end of the first day's march toward 
the front there came a drizzling rain. A few 
hundred yards back from the road an old barn 
stood on the side of a hill, and it seemed to me 
it was just the kind of lodging I wanted. I 
found the door closed, and when I tried to open 
it a chorus of voices cried out: 

^^No room! No room! Get out!" 



6 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

The Tommies were wedged in so close they 
were almost sleeping on top of one another. 

I prowled around to the rear, where I found a 
dog house built against the wall. I took off my 
pack, got down on hands and knees and began 
to creep in. Suddenly a man ^s foot was planted 
on top of my head and shoved me back. 

*'Well, blind me eyes!'' somebody croaked 
inside. ^^I thought it was the dog come back. 
Welcome to me 'umble 'ome, ye little swab. 
Come in." 

It was so dark inside that I couldn't see him 
at first, but as he seemed to be lying full length 
and as the dog house wasn't much more than 
five feet long I knew he couldn't be very big, 
especially as there was plenty of room for me 
alongside him. 

*^ Seems just like 'ome, matey," he said. 
^^Many's the night in my young days in the old 
country I've slept in a dog 'ouse." 

I thought, ^ ^ This chap must have been a tramp 
before he joined the army." I asked him if 
the dogs never objected. 

^^I never knew 'em not to," he answered. 
^^But I'm death on dogs, matey. A bloke in 
my trade can't spend much time arguin' with 



SQUEEZING 7 

'em. He's got to know 'ow to settle 'em." 

** What's your trade!" I asked. 

*^Well, matey, a sort of a night worker's job 
was mine. Detective Martin, from Scotland 
Yard, who's now in A Company, could tell you 
a thing or two about wot I did. Knows all 
about me. Been keepin' an eye on me hever 
since we left England. Did you never 'ear of 
Bonesey? Well, that's me." 

Yes, I had heard of him, and I began to wish 
I hadn't crept into that dog house. The men 
in A Company had been talking about Bonesey 
only that day. They said he had been one of 
the cleverest housebreakers in England. 

My eyes were getting used to the dark and I 
took a look at him. His name certainly suited 
him, for he didn't seem to be much but skin and 
bones, though he looked healthy enough and 
as if he might be as strong as iron, as some 
bony men are. He was a middle-aged chap, 
whose hair was turning gray. He had sharp 
little eyes, a hard mouth, and an old scar lay 
across his nose. I thought that with a dark 
lantern in one hand and a pistol in the other 
he must have been a desperate looking lad when 
doing his housebreaking. 



8 THE FIGHTING MASCOT iii 

That night I dreamed that Bonesey had crept 
into my room at home and was holding a gun at 
my head. 

Next day we were together on the march, and 
from that day on through six months of fighting 
we were pals. 



CHAPTER II 

INTO THE BIG NOISE 

THE next day we passed through little vil- 
lages where houses and churches had been 
torn with shells. Sometimes there would be 
nothing left of a village but ruins, with not a 
living thing in sight except now and then a 
lonely cat or dog. 

The noise of the guns was growing louder 
and louder. Boom! boom! boom! Even the 
ground seemed to shake. By afternoon we 
heard for the first time the rattle of machine 
guns. Typewriters was the name we learned 
for them after we got to the trenches, and they 
sound just enough like them to make a chap 
think of some girl pounding the keys in an office 
back home. 

Back home ! Oh, home and mother ! "Was I 
ever going to see them again! 

We knew when we heard the clickety-click 
of those typewriters that we were getting very 
near. I began to feel afraid. I couldn't help 



J 



10 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

it. I felt myself shaking; I could hardly hold 
my rifle. Billy Matchett, who was marching 
next to me, laughed. He had nerves of iron, 
that lad. The noise of the guns made him 
more and more cheerful the louder it grew. But 
there were other men — big chaps, too — who 
were shaking more than I was. They were as 
white as sheets, and one of them fainted and 
dropped in the road. He was a poor lad the 
Tommies had been calling ''Windy Dick'' be- 
cause he had been frightened ever since we left 
England. Windy is a word in the trenches to 
describe a chap who is nervous and jumpy un- 
der fire. 

But Windy Dick was a good enough sort at 
heart. He just couldn't help being afraid. 
While we were crossing the Channel he thought 
of nothing but submarines, and he had begun to 
shake the very first day we heard the guns. 
He had been shaking ever since. When I saw 
him drop I felt sorry for him and thought of 
what he had said to me one day on the march : 

''Tommy" — and his voice was shaking even 
then — ' ' I hope I get shot before I 'm caught run- 
ning away or doing anything like that. It isn't 
that I'm not willing to die if I have to. It's the 



INTO THE BIG NOISE 11 

fear of disgracing myself that worries me. I 
just can't help being afraid. It's my nerves." 

We left the poor chap for the water carts to 
pick up. He was going to have all the chance 
in the world to show himself a man later on. 

It was queer, but the sight of Windy and those 
other frightened lads braced me up, and the 
shaky feeling left me after a time. 

Once we got a glimpse of Ypres, far off — a 
ghostly lot of ruins; broken steeples, roofless 
houses, tumbling walls. Beyond it was a stretch 
of open ground without a tree or even a blade 
of grass, for the shells had ploughed up every 
inch of earth and pitted it with holes. Way off 
were low hills, half covered with patches of 
woods. 

I thought they were going to send us right 
into the fighting at the end of that day, but they 
didn't. Instead we slept beside the road, while 
our ears buzzed with a noise like the pounding 
of a thousand boiler makers on sheet iron. Yet 
with all that clatter most of the Jrag^ went 
sound asleep as soon as they were curled in their 
blankets, and didn't wake till morning. 

But Billy Clegg, Billy Matchett, old Bonesey 
and I cuddled up together and talked things 



12 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

over. Three of us were pals already and nat- 
urally got together whenever we had a chance 
and needed a little consolation, but Bonesey, 
who hadn't been in the same company with us 
till we got to Boulogne, was a brand-new chum. 
He seemed to take a liking to us, and he was 
about as hard to lose as a cootie after that. 

Before long the two Billies fell asleep, but 
Bonesey was a night owl and it was a long time 
before he stopped talking and dropped off. As 
for me, I was on the edge of the biggest adven- 
ture a boy could ever hope to find, and I lay 
thinking about it half the night, listening to the 
guns and watching the rockets and the shells 
against the black sky. 

In the morning the first thing I heard was the 
voice of Billy Clegg saying: 

^ ^ I got some straw down my neck. I can 't get 
it ouf 

Then I discovered that I had a prickly feeling 
myself and began to dig for it. All around me 
the lads were doing the same thing. 

*^ Straw!'' said the Sergeant. ^^Why, that 
ain't straw you blighters have got. It's coot- 
ies." 

And he was right. We all had them — the lit- 



INTO THE BIG NOISE 13 

tie crawlers that get into every soldier's clothes 
as soon as he gets to the front and stick to him 
like a loving brother till he gets back to Blighty. 
I wonder if Jim Hawkins had those things. I 
hadn't counted on them when I went adventure 
hunting. 

Before the sun set that day I had gone into 
the greatest bit of adventure a boy could ever 
hope to find, for that afternoon we filed into 
the trenches. 

Frightened? Oh, I'll admit it. So was 
Billy Clegg. I'm not so sure about Bonesey. 
He kept his mouth shut and looked as serious 
as an undertaker, and there was no telling how 
he felt. Billy Matchett was the only one of us 
who didn't change a bit, no matter how close 
the shells came. He went in humming a tune. 

We relieved the Black Watch, who had been 
there for weeks and who didn 't like the place a 
bit. They said it was one of the worst positions 
on the front — the dirtiest trenches, the biggest 
rats, the liveliest cooties and the hardest fight- 
ing. 

'^I feel a bit sorry for you poor blokes," said 
the big Black Watch trench guide who took us 
in. *^ After you've been in this blooming hell- 



14 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

hole as long as we have you'll be glad enough 
to get out. Keep your heads down, you pop- 
eyed blighters, if you don 't want Fritzie to drill 
holes through you. ' ' 

Those Black Watch lads made me open my 
eyes, I can tell you. Grimy they were as if they 
had been wallowing in mud for a year, and some 
had scars from knives or bayonets or bullets 
across their faces. Their regiment was famous 
already, for it had been through some of the 
hottest fighting of the war. Veterans, every 
one of them, these lads, who had seen more ter- 
rible things than I had ever dreamed of, who 
had killed Germans by the hundreds, who had 
had more wonderful escapes from death than 
they could remember. And here I was in their 
trenches chumming with them — with the heroes 
I had heard of so often — and one of a regiment 
come to take their places. It was a strange 
world, sure enough. Anything might come 
true after that. 

Bonesey nudged me as we filed along. 

*'Say, Mascot,'' he whispered; ^^I've seen 
'ard-lookin' blokes in my time but never the like 
of these. Wy, that big lad that's leadin' us 
'asn't 'ad a bath in ten years, and, blimey, if I 



INTO THE BIG NOISE 15 

don't believe 'e was a murderer before 'e joined 
the army from the looks of 'im. How'd you 
like to meet a chap like that alone in a dark 
alley, nowT' 

Bonesey was a hard-looking blighter himself, 
but he looked as sweet as an angel beside those 
Black Watchers. 

I hadn't been in the trenches half an hour 
before I forgot my fear. It seemed to be a 
fairly safe place, after all. Shells were flying 
overhead, and now and then a bullet plunked 
into the parapet, but hidden down there I didn 't 
see any pressing need for worry. 

That's what I was thinking, when suddenly 
a fine young lad jumped to the firing step to 
get a look at the Germans. He lifted head and 
shoulders above the top, and looked over. Just 
below him I stood staring up at him, wonder- 
ing at his recklessness. I saw him wave his cap, 
like the poor, innocent rookie he was, and I 
heard a sergeant roar at him to come down. 
He did come down, that very instant, falling 
backward almost on top of me, with a bullet 
hole in his head. 

The sight turned me half sick with fear and 
horror. He was the first man I have ever seen 



16 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

killed, and though I Ve seen hundreds dead and 
dying since that time I shall never forget the 
way he came tumbling down in a heap at my 
feet, without a cry or a groan. You never for- 
get the first dead man ; afterward there are too 
many to remember. 

The Black Watch went away to a well-earned 
rest before long and their trenches became ours. 
But the lad who had led us in hung on for a. time 
to tell us a few more pleasant things about 
what we might expect. The more he told us 
the sadder we grew, and the sadder he saw us 
growing the worse became his story of what we 
had come to. 



CHAPTER III 

IN DEAD men's ALLEY 

MAKE your wills and say your prayers/' 
said the big Black Watcher, ' ' for if any 
of you lads get out of this hole alive you'll be 
lucky, I can. tell you that. Dead Men's Alley 
we've named it, for of all the blooming unlucky 
spots on the line this bit of trench is the worst. ' ' 

Maybe we weren't a nervous lot when we 
heard that! Ow! I felt cold and shaky all 
over. 

Something happened a few minutes later that 
didn't make me feel any better, I can tell you. 

There came a sound like a railroad train go- 
ing through a tunnel with the engine whistle go- 
ing. Then came a crash that seemed to shake 
the whole trench, and not a hundred feet from 
where I stood a black column of smoke shot up 
to the sky. A shell had struck against our 
sand-bags. 

When the smoke cleared away I saw a man's 
body hanging over our wires and another lying 

17 



18 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

across tlie parapet. Soon the news ran along 
the line that three others had been struck by 
pieces of the shell and badly wounded. 

A thing that seemed strange to us, who were 
new to the queer ways of shells, was that a lad 
who had been standing only two yards from the 
explosion was not hurt nor even knocked off 
his feet, though a man close beside him had 
been blown out of the trench and was one of 
those I had seen lying dead. 

For the first few hours after the Black Watch 
chap and his regiment of grimy old veterans 
left us it didn't take much to make us think 
the Germans were coming. Sometimes one of 
us would believe he smelled gas and we would 
grab for our masks. If the German typewrit- 
ers rattled a little louder than usual our offi- 
cers would imagine they were getting ready for 
a raid and would call every man of us to the 
firing step. The first time I got there I found 
I couldn't reach to the top, so I got a sand bag 
and stood on it. That made me just high 
enough to see over and shoot. 

But the first Hun we saw came from another 
direction than we expected. With a loud buzz- 
ing noise he dropped down on us in his airplane 



IN DEAD MEN^S ALLEY 19 

right out of the sky and swooped along our 
trench not a hundred feet above our heads, pep- 
pering us with lead as he went. One man was 
killed not ten feet from where I stood and sev- 
eral more dropped not very far away. 

I had often wondered what it was going to be 
like to be under fire and had never once thought 
that I shouldn't have the nerve to face it. But 
when I saw that lad fall dead almost at my side 
while the shadow of that big, buzzing monster 
was creeping along the trench the old shaky 
feeling got hold of me again and I was as weak 
as a baby. I crouched in the bottom of the 
trench and covered my eyes to shut out the 
sight of the horrible thing overhead, and I 
thought of No. 15 Amelia Street and of what 
a safe, cosy, comfortable home it was. Oh, that 
little room of mine at home, and ^^ Treasure Is- 
land *' by candle light! 

It was all over in a moment. The buzzing 
noise died away and the stretcher bearers were 
coming through the trench after the dead and 
wounded. 

I got to my feet and looked about to make 
sure nobody had noticed me. The men I saw 
were too busy watching the sky to pay any at- 



20 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

tention to what might be going on in the trench. 
I looked up. There, far above ns, the Hun 
was being attacked by one of our own flyers. 

They circled round and round each other, 
firing all the time, and then Fritzie broke away 
and flew off as fast as he could go, our man 
giving him a hot chase. 

A big, black thunder cloud was rolling up 
from the East and Fritzie made for it. In a 
moment they had both disappeared inside of it. 
While we watched for them we could hear the 
thunder bellow and see flashes of lightning. 
They had gone right into the heart of the storm. 

Then came a streak of lightning that blinded 
us, and in the same instant out of the spot from 
which the flash had come an airplane, disabled 
and helpless, dropped as straight as a rock over 
the German lines. 

Whether it was our man or Fritzie we had no 
way of knowing, but a moment later the other 
plane came swooping out of the storm and cir- 
cled easily down behind our trenches. Then we 
knew it was Fritzie who had lost the fight and 
you should have heard the cheers that our men 
sent up. Even the Germans heard them way 



IN DEAD MEN'S ALLEY 21 

off in their lines, and answered them with a 
terrific rattling of their typewriters. 

One of our sentries was killed a few minutes 
later. I had a good look at him as they carried 
him past us on a stretcher. He was a man I had 
known at Oswestry, and he had been joking with 
me only that morning. I had seen more than 
one man die that day, but the sight of that lad 
that I had known so well made death seem more 
dreadful than ever before. I had heard him 
speak of his mother and sisters he had left at 
home, and I felt like crying when I thought of 
them. 

That night we crept into our dug-outs to sleep. 
Next to me lay Billy Matchett. 

*^Well, Mascot,'' said Billy, **here we are in 
it at last ; right into all that we 've been dream- 
ing about. Seems queer, don't it? Begin to 
wish you were back home, don't you now?" 

* ^ Not yet, Billy, ' ' I answered. * ^ I want to see 
the whole thing through. Then home will seem 
like a good place to get back to for a while." 

I meant every word of it, for the big adven- 
ture was only just beginning then, but if any- 
body had asked me the same question a month 



22 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

or two later, after we had been shot at and 
shelled and bombed and gassed and had slept 
in mud and rain along the Flanders roads I 
think I should have given a different answer. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE COLONEL GETS A WAENING 

THE Black Watcher liad told us those were 
the worst dug-outs he had ever been in. I 
don't believe he exaggerated. They couldn't 
have been worse. They were so small that only 
four men could creep into one and they were 
dirty and smelly. If the four men happened 
to be big chaps they had to sleep almost on top 
of one another, but I was so small that there 
were really only three and a half in ours and, 
one of them being Billy Matchett, who was long 
and narrow, we had room to spare. 

' ' Sleep tight, Mascot, ' ' said Billy. ' ' No tell- 
ing how soon they'll call us out of this." 

But how can a fellow sleep tight when a rat 
runs over his face every ^yq minutes! I had 
no more than dropped off when the first one 
came. The feet of a rat are the most horrible, 
cold, clammy things in the world and when 
they pattered right across my face I came wide 
awake with a jump and a yell. 

23 



24 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

Up jumps Billy the same moment. 

* * Ow ! I say, Mascot ! I can 't stand tliis, yon 
know. That thing was kissing me, that's what 
he was.'^ 

* ^ Oh, let him kiss yon ; what 's the difference 1 ' ' 
somebody growls in the dark. 

All four of us grumble and squirm a while; 
then we drop off. 

*^0w!'' It's Billy's voice again. *'I say! 
That rat's come back." 

^*Pull your coat over your face and shut up." 

Billy and I took the hint, and slept till the 
Sergeant called us out. 

That morning we heard that the Prussian 
Guard had taken the places of the Saxons in 
the trenches facing us and that we might ex- 
pect trouble. Prussians always mean trouble. 
They're the best fighters in the Kaiser's army 
— the best, the meanest, the crudest. 

The Fritzies' artillery and ^typewriters" 
were much busier after the Prussians arrived, 
and our lads on the firing step didn't take any 
chances in sticking their heads up any higher 
than they had to. 

A lad gets used to the * typewriters " and the 
rifles, but oh, those big guns ! They sent all 



THE COLONEL GETS A WARNING 25 

kinds of stuff at us, but the whiz-bangs were the 
worst. We called them that because of the 
way they went — with a whiz and a bang. A 
whiz-bang does a plucky lot of damage when it 
strikes, and very often they struck much too 
near to be pleasant. It made me nervous watch- 
ing them and wondering how much would be left 
of me if one should explode too close. 

One of these things struck our cook house, 
smashed it to pieces and killed every cook on 
duty — five of them. Dinner was an hour late 
that day. After that whenever the food wasn 't 
up to the mark some lad would be sure to say, 
^'I'm thinking it's about time we had some more 
cooks killed.'' 

Everybody had an idea that with all that fir- 
ing the Prussians were getting ready to raid 
us and to show us what kind of lads they were. 
But there wasn't one of them to be seen all day 
— not even a helmet popping up. I know now 
why they didn't come; they had another kind 
of a game in mind. 

We had all heard, of course, of the miners, the 
moles who spend all their time tunnelling deep 
under No Man's Land with shovels and picks 
hoping to plant a charge of dynamite under the 



26 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

enemy ^s trench. We had seen some of our own, 
who would disappear into dark holes and be 
gone for hours. A story spread along the line 
that the Germans^ miners were digging under- 
neath us and that we might expect to be blown to 
the sky any minute. We didn't know whether 
to believe it or not, but it wasn't good for our 
nerves. As for me, I should rather have heard 
the whole German army was coming at us than 
to feel that we might be standing over a mine. 

Along came Bonesey, looking glum as an owl. 

^* What's the trouble, Bonesey, old boy?" I 
sung at him, trying to cheer him a bit. ^ ' You 're 
not worrying about that mine 1 ' ' 

**Mine be blowed! If one goes off under me 
I'll never know it, so wot should I care? It's 
this Scotland Yard lad that's on me nerves, 
little man. When I joined the army I thought I 
was goin' to be somewheres where the police 
wouldn't be botherin' of me, but that lad's got 
'is eye on me hevery time I come within sight of 
'im. Wot's he think I'm up to now — 'ouse- 
breakin'?" 

A Eoyal Welsh Fusilier, whose regiment held 
the same line with ours, came along a moment 
later and began to tell us of what had been going 



THE COLONEL GETS A WARNING 27 

on before we arrived. He had been in the war 
ever since it started, and he told us things that 
made our eyes open. He told us how the Huns 
tortured prisoners and women and children and 
of horrible things he had seen with his own eyes. 
From what we heard from him and later from 
many others, too, I knew that the Huns had gone 
mad, the whole race of them, that fighting them 
was just like fighting savages and that it might 
be better to be killed than to fall alive into their 
hands. And I knew it not only from what I 
heard but from what before long I saw myself ; 
terrible things that sent cold shivers through 
me and that I couldn't get out of my thoughts. 
I would dream of them at night, and sometimes 
I would wake up with a cry, thinking those fiends 
had come to torture me. 

*^We old timers don't take any prisoners,'' 
said the Welshman. *^Not after what we've 
seen. After you've been in the trenches a 
month, my boy, you'll find killing Huns is just 
like killing vermin. You'll know the Lord is 
glad every time you stick your bayonet into 
one." 

I've heard stories of how the North Ameri- 
can Indians tortured people, but they were not 



28 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

as bad as what I heard and saw in Flanders. 

That Welshman had heard about the mine, 
too, and he told us it wouldn't surprise him if 
the whole trench went up into the air before 
long. He said the talk about the mine had been 
going on for days and that all the officers had 
heard it and had put our miners at work investi- 
gating. The miners, he said, thought at first 
that it might have been the rats that had started 
the scare and that the sound caused by their 
scurrying about in the dark had been mistaken 
for the scraping and shovelling of underground 
Germans. But he thought they must have given 
up that idea, because they were still searching 
for a tunnel. 

^ ^ But I 'm telling you, ' ' he said, * ' that getting 
blown up by a mine would be the pleasantest sort 
of an end a Britisher could come to in this 
plaguey spot.'' 

I Ve met more cheerful lads than that Welsh- 
man. He was as solemn as a mourner at a 
funeral, and he talked about nothing but trou- 
ble. Five minutes with him would take the 
laugh out of a laughing hyena. I felt glum for 
the rest of the day. A mine right under my 
feet, as likely as not, and a couple of hundred 



THE COLONEL GETS A WARNING 29 

yards away the worst fiends on earth waiting 
for a chance to torture me. Nice place I had 
come to. 

That evening came an order to withdraw to 
a trench in the rear, and we knew the mine 
story must be true. "We filed out through the 
communication trenches, leaving the sentries to 
keep guard until we were gone. 

Fifteen minutes later came a crash and a 
roar that staggered me. The whole world 
seemed to be blowing to pieces. Smoke and 
flame and flying earth filled the whole sky. 
Then it came again and again. Boom! boom! 
boom ! It was enough to burst our ear drums — 
the most awful noise I had ever heard. Then 
out of the great black smoke cloud the body of 
a man was tossed a hundred feet into the air — 
one of our own men who had stayed behind too 
long. 

We learned later that our miners had discov- 
ered not ten minutes before the order came for 
us to get out that the Germans were ready to 
blow us up, and word had been sent to the Colo- 
nel in a hurry. It's lucky the Colonel acted 
promptly. The old boy could act as quick as 
lightning when there was trouble in the wind. 



CHAPTER V 

THE GERMANS COME 

THAT cloud of smoke had scarcely disap- 
peared when the Germans opened up on 
us with everything they had. Bullets and shells 
were flying everywhere. The whiz-bangs tore 
gaps in our wire fences and in our sand-bag par- 
apet. Showers of sand, earth and pebbles fell 
over us and half blinded us. We lost some 
men; how many I don't know, but I saw two 
blown to pieces by a shell that dropped right 
into the trench. 

We four pals — Billy Clegg, Billy Matchett, 
Bonesey and I — were squatting in the trench in 
the dark, glad it wasn't our turn on the firing 
step in all that fuss, when along came that same 
funeral-faced Welshman. 

**I say, old 'Ard Luck," shouted Bonesey; 
**wot's biting yer now?" 

**That mine was there all right," croaked 
Welshie. ' ' Didn 't I tell you ? And I 'm telling 



THE GERMANS COME 31 

you now that there's more trouble coming be- 
fore long." 

As he spoke we heard somebody shouting 
orders down the trench. 

^'Coming!" yelled Billy Clegg. ''Its' here 
now!'' And he jumped to his feet. 

The same instant came the gas-mask signal. 
I grabbed for mine. My hands were shaking so 
I could hardly hold it, but there wasn't any time 
to lose if I wanted to live. As I fumbled with 
it I kept mumbling to myself, ''Fifteen seconds ! 
Fifteen seconds! One, two, three, four — " 

According to instructions, fifteen seconds was 
about the time allowed for a gas wave to arrive, 
and if that mask wasn't adjusted properly by 
the time I had counted fifteen then good-bye to 
Tommy Kehoe. 

I had got up to ten and was still fumbling, 
when Welshie grabbed me and put the thing in 
place on my head. Then we both jumped for 
the firing step. 

Not one hundred feet away a long, low fog 
bank was creeping toward us close to the 
ground. It was the gas wave. Our rockets 
were shooting up through the dark, and in their 
glare the wave turned yellow and red and green 



32 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

as it rolled on. Behind it all was pitch black. 
By the light of the rockets I could look along 
our line of trench and see our lads in helmets 
and masks stiff as statues, with their rifles 
pointing over the parapet. 

My mask was warm and stifling, and I felt 
like pulling it off for a big breath of fresh air 
before the wave should reach us, but I didn't 
dare. I had heard of men who had taken 
such a chance and who hadn't lived to tell of 
it. 

One moment the wave was sparkling white, 
like phosphorescent surf on a sand-bar, the next 
it gleamed green and red, like the deadly thing it 
was. And it crept toward us, oh, so slowly. 
Perhaps it was only ten seconds before it rolled 
over the sand bags, but it seemed like ten times 
as long. 

Then it swept over us. I gasped for air. I 
thought I was suffocating. I was sure there 
was a hole in my mask somewhere and that it 
was all over with me. But it wasn't as bad as 
that. I was half stifled, but there was a lot 
of life left in me, though the gas did get a few 
fellows — knocked them flat. 

There wasn't time to do any thinking about 



THE GERMANS COME 33 

the lack of air, for I saw something else rolling 
toward us, way out in the dark. Another gas 
wave, I thought. The fellows beside me were 
firing into it as fast as they could pull the trig- 
gers and I got busy with my rifle too. But why 
were they shooting at a wave! 

Then I saw what it was — not a gas wave but 
a mass of charging men. And how they did 
come! It seemed only an instant before they 
were in plain view — hundreds of hooded Huns, 
rushing on with fixed bayonets. 

What marks they were, all massed together, 
with the rockets throwing a glare over them! 
We scarcely had to take aim. Our bullets were 
sure to find them. I saw them fall, sometimes 
groups of them going down together. The ma- 
chine guns were mowing lanes right through 
their ranks. Yet they never once stopped. 
Again and again the gaps in their ranks closed 
up. Always came more men from over there 
in the dark to take the places of the dead and 
wounded. 

Not a hundred feet away they were when 
our lads were jumping to the parapet to meet 
them with their bayonets. I made a leap for 
the top of the ladder, grabbed at it, missed and 



34 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

slipped back. Somebody reached out a hand 
and pulled me up. 

Almost on us they were. Oh, never in my 
worst dreams — and IVe had many a bad one 
since then — have I seen a more dreadful sight 
than that. They came at us out of the dark like 
fiends from another world, like the pictures I We 
seen of men from Mars, for their heads were 
covered with the most devilish-looking masks 
that anybody could imagine, masks with huge 
round eyes and long, piggish snouts. Shells 
were bursting above them, machine guns were 
tearing through their ranks and their masks 
were white and ghastly in the light of the rock- 
ets. Many a time I had thought of what war 
would be like, but never had I thought I should 
look on such a sight as that. 

^^ Fight or die. Tommy Kehoe! Fight or 
die!" 

That's what I told myself as I crouched in 
front of the sand bags, with my bayonet ready 
for them. 

Whopping big men they were, head and shoul- 
ders above me. But as I waited there a thought 
flashed through me of the Bantam regiment, lit- 
tle fellows scarcely bigger than I, who had made 



THE GERMANS COME 35 

good against even those giant Prussians. Size 
didn't count behind a bayonet. It was quick- 
ness that counted. I was sure of it. If it didn't 
then it was all over with me. 

Even then, when they were almost up to us, 
how the guns were mowing them down! It 
looked as if none could be left in a moment or 
two. But those that didn't fall came on like 
madmen and poured through the lanes where 
the big guns had levelled our wires. 

One — he was a six-footer if he was an inch 
— ran straight for me with his bayonet out. I 
crouched and thrust at him — thrust upward. 
His bayonet went over my shoulder. He stag- 
gered and fell over my gun. 

I had got him! I had got him! In the 
stomach ! 

'Twas lucky for me there was no time to think 
over it or to stand there gaping at the dead 
Hun hanging over my gun with his masked 
head almost touching me, for it was horrible. 
For a second or two I turned dizzy and sick. 
But it was fight again or die. I jerked my rifle 
back and stumbled over the dead man as he 
flopped to the ground. 

**Make for their stomachs, Tommy Kehoe! 



36 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

Make for their stomachs!'' I told myself. 
**Size don't count." 

A fellow was coming for me swinging his gun 
above his head ready to strike me with the butt. 
He frightened me. I hadn't counted on that 
kind of fighting. Just then somebody stuck him 
from behind with a bayonet and he fell. 

There were more Huns coming and I thought 
it was all up with us. But as I looked at them 
again I saw that they were without their rifles 
and that they were holding their hands above 
their heads. They were surrendering. The 
fight was over. 

Yes, it was over, but dead and wounded men 
were all about us, and we had lost many of our 
own. I didn 't recognize any of them as they lay 
there, for they were masked, but later I found 
that lads I had known were missing. There was 
much work for the stretcher bearers in front of 
the trenches that night. Dangerous work it 
was, too, for the Huns never stopped shooting 
at them. 

Before long a wind sprang up that blew the 
gas away, and we pulled off our masks, glad to 
breathe the fresh air again. Oh, how good that 
fresh wind was in our faces ! We got together 



THE GERMANS COME 37 

in little groups and talked over the fight. One 
lad named John Goldstein, from London, showed 
us a steel breastplate he was wearing under his 
uniform. He said his father had sent it to him 
hoping it would save his life. 

^ ^ And it has saved it, ' ^ Goldstein said. * ^ Look 
here.'' 

He struck a match and showed us a dent in 
the breastplate close to his heart, and a little 
above it he pointed out a scratch. 

*^The dent's where a bullet struck," he said. 
** Knocked me flat on my back, but that's all the 
harm it did, thanks to my old man at home. 
And that scratch I got from a Boche bayonet. 
The Hun ran at me and jabbed me hard. Must 
have thought I wasn't human when his bayonet 
wouldn't go through. He's out there near the 
wires now, what's left of him. I got him." 

**This workin' in the dark is wot suits me," 
said Bonesey. *^I got three of the beggars, but 
I'd 'ave 'ated to meet 'em by day. I never was 
no good in the daytime. ' ' 

From somewhere in the dark I heard, ^'Didn't 
I tell you there was going to be trouble?" I 
knew that voice. It belonged to that funeral- 
faced Welshie. 



38 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

*^No need of tellin' us, old 'Ard Luck,'' sung 
out Bonesey. *' There's always trouble comin' 
when you 're about. ' ' 

^^Cheero!" said Billy Matchett. *'It's all 
over." And he sat down in the bottom of the 
trench and sang: 

"Are loe downhearted now? 
Not likely ichile Britannia rules the leaves! 
While we've Jacky on the sea and Tommy on the land 
We needn't fret. 

It's a long, long way to Tipperary, 
But we're not downhearted yet." 

**Come and sing. Mascot," he said, *'and for- 
get about trouble for a little. ' ' 

I sat down beside him in the dark, and we sang 
together '^The Ship That's Bound for Blighty," 
*'Boys in Khaki, Boys in Blue," and ''Take Me 
Back to Dear Old Blighty," and for a time I 
forgot about the bloody work we had had that 
night. 

Some of the lads came along and crouched 
down beside us to listen. When we had finished 
old Bonesey pulled me up and pounded me on 
the back. 

"I'm thinkin' the Mascot made good," he 
said. "The bloomin' little shaver got one — 



THE GERMANS COME 39 

right in the stomach. Ain't he the cute little 
beggar nowT' 

Bonesey always did have a good word to put 
in for me. But I didn't need it that night. I 
had killed my first German, and I was as puffed 
up with pride over it as a lad who's just got 
his V. C. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE LOST PATROL 

BILLY CLEGG was a great lad for dreams. 
Once he dreamed that a German officer 
was lying in the bottom of a shell hole near our 
wires with a wounded leg. And, so help me, 
it was the truth. The German was found there 
the night after Billy told about it. 

I was never much of a believer in dreams and 
things like that myself, but the lads in the 
trenches get to believe almost anything, so many 
queer things happen there, and IVe more faith 
in dreams than I once had. IVe kno^vn them 
to come true many a time. Two of Billy Clegg's 
did — the one about the German and another 
about himself. 

^^ Mascot,'' he said to me one morning as he 
crawled out of his dug-out, ^'I had a bad one 
last night.'' 

** About what?" said L 

*^ About being out between the lines," an- 
swered Billy. *^0w! It makes me shiver yet. 

40 



THE LOST PATROL 41 

It was this way : They sent me out in the dark 
with a patrol. That is, in my dream they did. 
The first thing we knew we had walked right 
into a party of Germans three times as big as 
our own. They were all around us, and we 
couldn't get away. And they came at us with 
the bayonets. '^ 

'^And what happened to youT' I asked. 

^^I don't know a blooming thing more about 
what happened," said Billy. ''That's the end 
of the dream." 

And that same day they picked Billy Clegg as 
one of a party to go out on patrol. 

That night he and fifteen other lads went out. 
I saw them go. Just before they climbed up 
over the sand bags Billy came up to me and 
shook me by the hand. A fine young fellow he 
was, all smiles and jokes as a rule, but he looked 
as solemn as an owl just then. 

''Good-bye, Mascot," he said. "And if I 
shouldn't come back write a letter home for 
me." 

Standing on the firing step, I put my head over 
the top and watched them go out. I could see 
them until they had passed through the lanes 
between our wires and a little beyond ; then the 



42 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

darkness swallowed them up. I wondered 
whether I should ever see Billy Clegg again. 

^^Of course he'll come back/' I told myself. 
^'That dream has got on his nerves. But 
there's no sense in dreams, and anyway he 
didn 't dream he was killed. ' ' 

Then I turned in for some sleep. 

It was daylight when I woke up, and the big 
guns were booming, as they almost always were. 

^^Did our patrol get back all right?" I asked 
of a sergeant. 

* ^ Still out, ' ' he answered. ^ ^ Something gone 
wrong perhaps, or they may be lying safe out in 
shell holes or in the wood over yonder." 

The morning passed, and they hadn't re- 
turned. But we didn't give up hope, because 
patrols had been known to stay out two or three 
days and come back safe. By the time it grew 
dark our officers decided that something must 
have happened to the patrol. There came a 
call for volunteers to go out and search for 
them. 

In the party were Bones ey and I and eight 
others. It was dangerous work, because the sky 
was clear, there was no fog, and the moon was 
due in less than an hour. It was dark enough 



THE LOST PATROL 43 

to hide us from the German trenches, but if the 
moon should come up in a clear sky we should 
have to come back in a hurry, and more than 
likely the Boches would drop us on the way. 

It was rough going, because almost every 
square yard of the ground had been churned up 
by shells. Sometimes we sank to our ankles, 
and, as the earth was sticky, it was hard to pull 
our feet out. Whenever the Germans sent up a 
light we dropped flat on the ground and lay 
there till it grew dark again. 

We had been prowling about for perhaps fif- 
teen minutes, when Bonesey dropped to the 
ground and pulled me down beside him. 

^^ Bodies,'^ he whispered. 

The beggar's ears were as sharp as a bird 
dog's. 

* ' I can 't hear anything, ' ' I said. 

^ ^ Whisht ! Listen ! ' ' whispered Bonesey. 

The rest of the patrol had followed our ex- 
ample, and were lying flat, too. We lay still 
for a full minute. Then I heard voices. They 
seemed to be drawing nearer. The men, who- 
ever they were, were speaking very softly, but 
now and then we could hear their footsteps and 
the rattling of their guns. 



44 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

*' Perhaps they are our own men/^ I said. 

^'Don^t be fooling of yourself, little boy,'' an- 
swered Bonesey. ** Didn't I 'ear 'em talking? 
And don 't I know their bloomin ' language when 
I 'ears it I" 

The next moment I saw them. They were 
coming straight toward us. I counted them. 
Twenty-two ! We were outnumbered more than 
two to one. If they saw us we were as good as 
done for. Oh, what beautiful marks they were ! 
We could have drawn a line on eight of them 
and missed not one. That would have left 
fourteen, and we might have got a few more 
before they would begin shooting. But then 
what would happen? As soon as they heard the 
firing the Germans in the trenches would open 
up on us with their star-lights and guns and 
wipe us out. It's never safe to fire a gun in No 
Man's Land. 

The patrol came closer. I almost stopped 
breathing, thinking every second that they 
would see us. For a moment one of them stood 
so near to me that I could have reached out and 
almost touched him. I don't think I breathed 
at all while he stood there. I thought he must 
hear my heart pounding against my ribs, for it 



THE LOST PATROL 45 

TV as going like a trip-hammer. But he passed 
on, and after a few moments I heard Bonesey 
whisper : 

^'They're gone. Blind me eyes! IVe 'ad 
close squeezes, Mascot, but never one like that.*' 
I jumped up and gasped for air. I was shak- 
ing all over. 

We waited, listening, a little while; then we 
moved on. After a few minutes of prowling 
about we decided we should have to go back, 
or the moon would catch us. We had just 
turned toward our own trench when we came 
across a body. It was one of the men in the 
missing patrol. There was a bayonet hole 
through him. We searched over the ground 
near where he lay and found six more of them, 
all dead. The others we couldn't find, and we 
were sure they must have been taken prisoners. 
I saw one of our lads bending' over one of 
the bodies. He looked up and turned to 
me. 

^^Give a hand, Mascot,'' he said, ^*and we'll 
carry him in. It's Billy Clegg." 

It was hard going and all we could do to get 
across the rough ground with the bodies, but we 
knew we had to move fast. Once I looked over 



46 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

my shoulder, and what I saw gave me a scare. 
Over the German trenches the sky was growing 
bright. 

Suddenly a glow of light fell over us. The 
moon was up. The Germans would surely get 
sight of us in a moment. Just then we came up 
against the wires- — our own wires, and in an- 
other minute we were safe. 

The next day the postman brought a letter 
and a package for Billy Clegg. The letter was 
from his girl, for I knew her writing — a pretty 
girl in Liverpool whom he had hoped to marry 
some day. There was a package for me, too, 
from my mother. Inside were some things to 
eat and a mouth organ. I played the mouth 
organ and Billy Matchett sang a song, while we 
tried to forget about what had happened to 
Billy Clegg. 

But I couldn't forget that the poor lad had 
asked me to write to his people at home. I'm a 
bad hand at writing, but I got out a pencil and 
paper and did the best I could. I got as far as, 
* * You will be sorry to hear that Billy is dead, ' ' 
and there I stuck. I couldn't think of another 
word to say that would do any good. After a 
lot of thinking I made up my mind to add that 



THE LOST PATROL 47 

the Bodies drove a bayonet through him, but 
Bonesey told me not to. 

^^You got to write only wot's cheerful and 
consoling," he said. "Say, ' 'E died like a 
'ero, fighting for hold England.' '' 

So I did, and let it go at that. 

"Now,'' said Bonesey, "I'm thinking that I 
should be doing some writing myself. The close 
squeeze I 'ad last night has set me thinking that 
I may get killed before this war is over, and my 
will's not made." 

He pulled out his pay book, for there is a 
blank place left in them for the lads to make 
their wills, and began to write. 

"Didn't know you had a family, Bonesey," I 
said. 

"Not a soul belonging to me in this world, ' ' he 
answered. 

"Then what's the good of making a will?" 

"There might be a few shillings of back pay 
comin' to me," he said, "and there's a few lit- 
tle things I've left back in London." 

"Who's going to get it?" 

"A girl. Mascot. She's the daughter of a lad 
that was once a pal of mine. Shot by me side, 
'e was, while we was doing a little job of 'ouse- 



48 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

breaking one night. I've looked after 'er since 
she wasn 't much more than knee 'igh to me, and 
many's the night I've taken chances with the 
bobbies to get swag enough for 'er proper 
schoolin'. She's full grown now and able to 
look after 'erself, but she 'asn't forgotten old 
Bonesey, not she. 

^'When we marched off for the war about 
every blighter in the company 'ad somebody 
come to see 'im off and wish 'im well. And I 
says to myself, ^I'm the only bloke in the lot 
that 's got nobody to say good-bye to. ' 

*^But, so 'elp me, the next minute I gets me 
eyes on that little lassie, come hall the way from 
London to give me a cheer. Blimey, if it didn 't 
make me feel good ! 

* ^She'll get the back shillings coming to me. 
Mascot, and w'atever else I've got, for she's the 
only bloomin' soul on earth wot will drop a tear 
for Bonesey when 'e's planted under the dais- 
ies." 

A shell ploughed into the sand bags, and the 
shock almost sent the pad out of his hands ; but 
he held onto it and began to write his will. 



CHAPTER VII 

GHOSTS OF THE NIGHT 

NIGHT sentry-go is an ugly, creepy job. 
My first try at it was the longest night 
I've ever put in. Afterward it wasn't so bad. 

* * So that mascot of ours is going to guard us 
to-night," said Billy Matchett, who thought he 
was a great joker because before he joined the 
army he got his living in the music halls in that 
way and with his singing. ^'That means the 
Boches will get us sure. The kid's scarce old 
enough to keep awake in the daytime, let alone 
at night." 

Then he and big Tom Brannigan got busy 
stretching the joke along till I felt like giv- 
ing them a feel of my bayonet. Red-headed 
Murphy joined in with them, too, and he was 
worse than either of them, for he never knew 
when to stop, but I saw him killed on the road 
to Arras a month later and I can forgive him 
for all the fun he got out of me. 

Sentry-go was two hours on and two hours off 

49 



50 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

all night. I hadn't slept well the night before, 
for the '* cooties'' and the rats had been after 
me hard, but up there alone on the firing step 
I felt so important that I forgot all about being 
sleepy. I got to thinking of all the sleeping 
soldiers I was guarding from danger and of 
how the lives of all of them might hang on how 
well I did the job in case the Huns should creep 
up in the dark. And I said to myself : 

^^It's quite a job for a sixteen-year-old lad, 
Tommy Kehoe, and you should be proud of 
yourself. There's many a friend of yours at 
home in Liverpool that would like to be in your 
shoes tonight." 

Sometimes it grew so quiet that I could hear 
our men talking together in low voices in the 
dug-outs. One voice was shrill and squeaky, 
and I knew it belonged to ** Windy" Bullen, 
who was always talking about the ** cooties" 
and rats he had killed. He was a proud lad 
whenever he killed a ** cootie" that was differ- 
ent from the rest. 

** Blimey now," I heard him squeaking, *4f it 
wasn't pink with green eyes, the bloody bloater! 
And he chawed clean through me bloomin' 
'ide!" 



GHOSTS OF THE NIGHT 51 

Then the artillery would begin again or a 
machine gnn would break loose. Every few 
minutes a star-light would go up from the Ger- 
mans^ trenches, and, oh! it was a lovely sight 
as it sent a soft glow over all the ugly shell 
holes. It was like watching fireworks at home 
on a holiday, only the air smelled better at home, 
for there there weren't any dead bodies lying 
about. Whenever a star-light went up I could 
see some of those bodies. 

When my legs grew stiff from standing still 
looking over the sand bags I marched back and 
forth along the firing step. A guard can do 
that, but it's none too safe, for you never know 
when the Germans will get busy. I had heard of 
a night guard who was taking a little walk to 
stretch his legs, when a Hun crept up and 
knocked him on the head just as he made the 
turn in his beat, and I couldn't help thinking that 
the same thing might happen to me. 

Two hours of it brought my lay-ofP, and I got 
a little sleep till the Sergeant rapped me up with 
a biff on the sole of my foot. Then back again 
to the firing step. Nothing to do but stand 
there looking over the sand bags wondering 
whether a sniper would get me. More likely it 



52 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

would be a machine gun, for it was too black for 
snipers. A sniper is a wonder when the moon 
is up or the stars bright and the air clear, but 
dark nights put him out of business, and I felt 
lucky for that. Snipers or no, a guard has to 
keep his helmet over the top more or less. 

Except when the star-lights went up, I could 
see just about as far as our wires. Just in front 
of me something black was swinging against 
them. It was a dead Hun with his head hang- 
ing down. How long he had been there I don't 
know, but I got a strong whiff of him every 
time the breeze came toward me and he couldn't 
have been a new comer. 

The worst thing about night sentry-go is the 
trouble a lad has keeping awake. If you go to 
sleep and the Sergeant catches you — ow ! They 
could shoot a man for doing that, and no matter 
how lucky he may be he never gets off easy. 
But I couldn't help getting sleepy. I tried to 
keep awake by walking, but as soon as I would 
come back to my perch I would begin to nod 
again. And then I dropped off. 

I didn't know anything more till I heard a low 
whistle. That brought me wide awake with a 
jump. I had been standing up, leaning against 



GHOSTS OF THE NIGHT 53 

my gun, but I may have been snoring for all I 
knew. It gave me an awful scare. For a sec- 
ond I didn^t know whether the whistle had 
come from the Sergeant or a German, but either 
way would have been bad enough. I thought I 
was done for. Then from somewhere down in 
the trench came a whisper: 

' ' Whisht ! Wake up. Mascot ! ' ' 

So it wasn't either the Sergeant or a Hun, and 
I was safe. I kept wide awake after that. 

There's something about night sentry-go that 
stirs up a lad 's imagination till everything about 
him is like a dream, and mostly like a bad dream, 
too. The Irish boys from Liverpool are al- 
ways seeing ghosts in the dark. Brannigan 
used to see a headless soldier walking up and 
down in front of the trench, and he would watch 
the thing until cold shivers ran through him. 
He saw the headless soldier coming for him in 
a raid once, and it was the only time I ever saw 
Big Tom afraid. He came near getting shot by 
his officer for starting to run back to our trench. 
And one day a little later, when a Hun whose 
head had just been blown off tumbled right on 
top of him in a shell hole he let out a yell that 
we could hear above the artillery. 



54 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

That first night on guard I saw something 
myself that I know now couldn't have been true 
but that I couldn 't get out of my mind for days 
and days afterward. As I was staring over 
the top a rocket went up from the Germans and 
sent a broad path of light from their trench 
almost to ours. Eight in the centre of that 
lighted way I saw somebody coming toward me. 
It was a woman with her arms stretched out, 
as if she were pleading. The light was shining 
full on her face, and I saw it was my mother. 

I thought I heard her calling, 

** Tommy, lad! Tommy, lad!'' 

But the artillery was going just then and I 
knew I couldn't have heard her voice at that 
distance. 

Then the light went out and she disappeared 
in the dark. 

I believed that night that I really had seen 
her, and I wondered whether she was groping 
about for me out there in the dark. Then I 
began to be afraid. I thought my mother might 
be dead and that this was her ghost come to 
find me. It was terrible to think of her moving 
about out there among all those dead men ; but 
it seemed just as bad to have her creeping to- 



GHOSTS OF THE NIGHT 55 

ward me out of the dark. Ghosts are ghosts, 
and I didn 't care to meet with one alone in the 
night, even my mother's. 

A week later I got a letter from her that told 
me she was as well as ever. 

It wasn't death or the dead soldiers that 
frightened the Tommies; it was those dead sol- 
diers' ghosts. 

I remember that after Charlie Tapper was 
killed his pal, McGuire, couldn't sleep nights for 
fear Charlie would come back and haunt him. 
And one night Charlie's ghost did come. 

McGuire was in his dug-out writing a letter 
home. He felt a puff of cold air on his face, 
and, looking up, he saw Charlie, who didn't seem 
to be made of anything much but white fog, com- 
ing in through the door. 

^^Mac," says the ghost, ^'I can't rest easy till 
I get a plug of tobacco. Could you spare your 
old matey a cut of it?" 

Mac spilled the ink all over the paper and 
buried his head in a blanket. When at last he 
got up nerve enough to peek out Charlie was 
gone, and Mac never forgave himself for not 
passing over the plug. 

Thinking over those things up there against 



56 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

the parapet made me nervous. I thought I saw 
the dead German who was hanging on the fence 
move his arms, and it made me jump. Then a 
rocket went up and I got a look at his face, and 
even though he was hanging head down he 
looked as if he might be asleep, dreaming of his 
home. 

^'Well, Fritzie,'' I told him, ^^I shouldn't 
wonder if that's how it will come to all of us — 
with a dream of home." 

Then I thought of my own home, and imagined 
I could see my mother looking out of the win- 
dow to the pier's head where the ships come in 
and wondering when I was coming back. 

^ ' Tommy, lad, ' ' I said to myself, * ^ if ever I get 
back there again that's where I'll stay. It's too 
full of dead men's ghosts out here." 



CHAPTER VIII 

HEEOES AND COWARDS 

YOU may think a man a coward when he's 
not ; you may think another is brave when 
he's not. I've found that it's only in the 
trenches that you tind out much about a man 
that's more than skin deep. 

^^ There's many a lad that's no good that 
looks good and seems good," our chaplain, Fa- 
ther O'Brien, told me. ^^And there's many a 
lad who's all white inside without you ever 
thinking it. A man's got to do more than say 
his prayers to prove he's a Christian." 

One night a party went out on patrol, and 
one of them was ^^ Windy" Dick, who had 
fainted when he heard the artillery as we 
marched to Ypres. 

^^ Better say your prayers. Windy," some- 
body called to him. ^^ That's a bad job you're 
on. The Boches will get you like as not." 

*^ Windy" didn't make any answer to that. 

57 



58 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

The lads had been making fun of him ever since 
the day he dropped in the road, and he had 
learned that it only made them worse to talk 
back. He went up over the top with the rest of. 
the party, and that was the last we saw of 
him till after dark the next evening. The pa- 
trol had got back long before that without him, 
and it was an even bet whether '^ Windy'' had 
been shot or scared to death. 

We had about made up our minds we were 
never going to see him again when three men 
hove in sight out of the dark beyond the wires. 
One was driving the other two along at the end 
of his bayonet and was ripping out a curse at 
them with every step. 

*^ Blimey if it isn't Windy Dick!" cried Bone- 
sey. ^^Has me eyesight gone wrong, or am I 
dreaming!" 

That was who it was, too ; *' Windy" with two 
prisoners, and his chest was sticking out like a 
pigeon's with pride. 

^^I've been lying out in a shell hole all day 
with these two blokes waiting for dark before 
bringing them in," he said. '^They've been 
whining ^kamerad' at me three times a minute 
for fifteen hours thereabouts and I'^ve been 



HEROES AND COWARDS 59 

tickling them with the bayonet every time they 
said it. ' * 

^ ^You're not meaning to tell ns you got that 
pair all by your little self f said Big Tom. 

^*I did,'' answered ^* Windy," *^ which is more 
than you've done. And don't you be calling me 
* Windy' any more, either." 

The lads thought *' Windy" must have gone 
balmy. Not only had he taken two prisoners 
all by himself, but he was a changed man. 
There wasn't anything meek and timid about 
the way he carried himself now. 

The next day he told me what had happened. 
Somehow in the dark he had got separated from 
the patrol, and while wandering about alone try- 
ing to find them he had caught sight of the two 
Huns. 

He had been so scared when he went out with 
the patrol that he made up his mind he was 
going to be killed sure, and when he saw the 
Huns he thought his time had come to go west. 
That idea put some ginger into him, and he said 
to himself that if he'd got to die he might as 
well pass out fighting. So he sailed into the 
Huns, who didn't see him coming and who were 
so taken by surprise when they saw his bayonet 



60 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

under their noses that they threw up their 
hands. 

*^ Windy'' wandered about with the two 
Boches till sunrise, for he had lost his bearings 
and was afraid of getting into the German 
trench by mistake. When it grew light he made 
sure which way to go, and dropped with the 
Boches into the shell hole to wait for dark when 
walking wouldn't be sure death. 

After that there wasn 't a better fighter in the 
company than *' Windy" Dick, who had been 
scared into being brave. 

One of the bravest men of the war was in our 
regiment. He was James Proctor, of Liver- 
pool. He brought in twenty-four wounded men 
one at a time on his shoulders from in front 
of the German guns, and won the Victoria 
Cross. 

I wasn't there when that was done, but the 
lads were all talking about it, and one of them, 
Michael 'Grady, of A Company, said he was 
going to win the Victoria Cross, too, or die 
trying for it. 

^'I'm going over to the Boches trench to drop 
a bomb," he told Sergeant Griffiths. 

It was a bright night, with the snipers busy, 



HEROES AND COWARDS 61 

and the Sergeant warned him that he would be 
killed. 

* * I don 't care, ' ' answered 'Grrady. * ' I want 
to earn something/' 

He crept up over the top and began crawling 
toward the Germans. The Sergeant thought 
he would be killed before he had gone ten yards, 
but, although the bullets began to fly, none of 
them struck him. He had crawled to within a 
few feet of the Germans ' first line when he was 
killed. 

Another brave man was ^^Red'' Bullen, who 
was brave because he had got the notion into his 
head that he couldn't be killed. 

*^I've been through more tight places than any 
man in the company, ' ' ^ ^ Red ' ' would say, ^ ^ with- 
out a scratch to show for it. If I'd been slated 
to die I'd have been buried long ago. Look at 
this. It's what saves me. I can't be killed so 
long as I've got this about me." 

Then he would pull out a little cross a French 
girl had given him and that he wore hanging 
from a string around his neck. She had told 
him it would save him from being shot as long 
as he wore it. 

One day he and three other men were to- 



62 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

gether behind the lines when a shell exploded 
where they were standing. *^Red^' was 
knocked down, but he jumped up and found that 
he was unhurt except for some gravel in his 
eyes. Then he saw that the three men who had 
been standing beside him had all been killed. 
After that he was more certain than ever that 
the cross would save him. 

No matter how fast the bullets came, *^Red" 
didn't care. 

^^They can't get me,'' he would say. *^I 
needn't worry." 

And then one day a bullet did get him. 

**He must have lost his cross," said Big Tom, 
who was superstitious and believed in things 
like that. 

And, so help me ! he had lost it. It wasn't on 
his body, and the string around his neck was 
broken. 

*^ Don't tell me there's nothing in luck 
pieces," said Big Tom. ^^And yet I've known 
'em to fail. A man I knew in B Company had 
a bead a girl had given him, and he always 
wore it next his skin, thinking it would save him. 
But he was killed the first day he was in the 
front line. How can you account for that now? 



HEROES AND COWARDS 63 

The way I figure it is that some of these luck 
pieces are lucky and some are unlucky, and 
there's never smj telling which is which. 
You Ve just got to wear 'em and take a chance.'' 

But I never could see it that way myself. If 
a lad has to take a chance with them he might 
as well take a chance without them. I never 
wore one, and here I am alive. 

Speaking of brave men, there were none 
braver than the Ghurkas, who fought side by 
side with us in those Ypres trenches. They 
had brought with them from India their big 
knives, curved like mowing sickles and sharp- 
ened on the concave edge, and they used them 
more often than the bayonet. They would 
swing them around and chop off the Huns ' heads 
just as if they were mowing grass. Then on 
the points of the knives they would carry the 
heads back to their own trenches. Of all the 
men in our line the Grermans dreaded those black 
Ghurkas the most. 

Sometimes we would steal the Ghurkas' 
shirts, but they were a good-natured lot so long 
as we didn't go too far with our jokes. But if 
anybody went past the limit with them he was 
sure to be in trouble, for the Ghurka is a bad 



64 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

man to have dealings with when he's angry. 

Whenever they set out for the German 
trenches the Ghurkas never stopped, no matter 
how thick the bullets were flying. And, oh ! how 
Fritzie hated to see them coming! With those 
big knives of theirs they could clean out a Ger- 
man trench quicker than any men I ever saw. 
But they were no account if the officers wanted 
prisoners, for they were too fond of chopping 
the Huns ' heads off to take any of them alive. 

We had many lads of our own as brave as any 
Ghurka that ever lived, but we had cowards, too, 
and that's more than the Ghurkas had. I 
learned a thing or two from those men who were 
afraid. I found that they were just as likely 
to get killed as the men who were brave. And 
I said to myself, 

** What's the use of being a coward when it 
doesn't even save your life!" 

Most of them w^ere bom cowards, and they 
never got over it, no matter how much fighting 
they went through. One of them came up to 
me one day and held up his trigger finger. 

*^ Shoot it off for me, will you. Mascot?" he 
said. ''I want to go back to Blighty." 

I wouldn 't do it, but he kept on asking till he 



HEROES AND COWARDS 65 

found somebody who did the job for him. I 
could count a dozen such men who tried to lose 
the trigger finger to get out of the war. And 
I knew another who wanted to lose a finger but 
who didn 't have the nerve. Every day he would 
talk about it, but when somebody would ofPer to 
shoot it off he would change his mind. That 
poor chap was always afraid, and even after he 
had been weeks in the trenches he would jump 
every time a shell came near. 

Then came a night when he had to go over 
the top in a raid. He was shaking so much he 
could scarcely climb out of the trench. Half 
way across No Man's Land he got a bullet in the 
back, and it was said afterward that it was 
one of our own officers who shot him because he 
was running away. 

Better to be a brave man than a coward, and 
just as safe — perhaps a little safer. That's the 
lesson I learned from such men as he. 



CHAPTER IX 



BLIND me eyes! If 'ere isn't old 'Ard 
Luck back again! Wot's goin' to 'ap- 
pen to us now?" 

It was old Bonesey, giving a welcome to the 
funeral-faced lad from the Fusiliers. "We 
hadn't seen Welshie for some time, but he hadn't 
changed. He was the same old cheer-killer. 

^*Now, I'm telling you, there's trouble on the 
way," Welshie began as soon as he had joined 
us. 

^* There's always trouble, with you about," 
growled Bonesey. ^ * Wot 's the gay word you 've 
brought now?" 

**Just set your eyes on that sky," said 
Welshie. *^I'm telling you we're in for bad 
weather, and you '11 know what that means after 
we've had a few days of it. It rains something 
awful in this God-forgotten land when it does 
rain, and I'm telling you it's on the way. 

66 



^^HARD LUCK'' PEOPHESIES 67 

There'll be good swimming in these trenches be- 
fore it's over." 

Welshie should have been in the government 
weather office. People would always know when 
storms were coming then. Only there 'd be 
nothing else but storms. 

It came just as that cheerful lad had pre- 
dicted. That evening it began to rain. It 
rained all night hard. The water came into our 
dug-outs and soaked us through and through. 
No chance of dry clothes to change to. When 
we got wet we stayed wet. While we slept we 
oozed with water and mud. The rats splashed 
about beside us, spattering us and now and then 
running over us. A dry rat feels bad enough 
on a lad 's face, but a wet one — ow ! I squirmed 
all the rest of the night after feeling one. 

In the morning we got some tea, dog-biscuits 
and bully beef, but we couldn't get the mud out 
of our mess-tins, and it got mixed up with the 
food. There was only one thing to console us : 
the guns weren't so busy as usual. Sometimes 
an hour would pass without a sound but the rain 
and the curses of the soldiers. Now and then 
the artillery would loosen up a little, and the 
shells sent the mud spouting up in big, brown 



68 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

geysers. A shell struck only a few feet away 
from us, and the mud storm that went up from 
the hole it made came down all over us. I 
thought before that happened that we were as 
muddy as we could be, but we were a lot worse 
afterward. 

^ * I say, Mascot, ' ' Billy Matchett called to me 
as he tried to wipe the mud out of his eyes. 
^^What did you ever get into this blinkin' war 
for? You didn't have to.'' 

**To get a bit of adventure, Billy," I an- 
swered. *^And I'm getting it — more than I 
wanted. Those old pirates I used to read about 
were better off than we. They didn't have mud 
like this where they were, or if they did the book 
writers forgot to mention it." 

^^When this war is over," said Billy, *^I'll 
look for my adventures down on the tropic is- 
lands, if I need any more. I've had enough of 
this country." 

The trenches were filling up fast. The pumps 
worked steadily, but the water came in faster 
than they could send it out. By the end of that 
day it was up to my waist. And, oh, it was 
cold! I almost froze. It wouldn't have been 
so bad if I had known I was going to have a 



^^HAED LUCK" PROPHESIES 69 

dry place to creep into at night to sleep, but 
there was no hope of that. We knew we should 
have to stay where we were, shivering and with 
our teeth chattering, until the rain stopped and 
the sun came out, and there was no telling when 
that would be. 

**The water's spoiled all my fags," moaned 
Billy. ^ ^ I 'd give all the back pay coming to me 
for a smoke." 

Most of the lads were in the same fix, and not 
having any cigarettes made them sadder than 
ever, for a Tommy doesn't think life is worth 
living when he can't smoke. There was no 
singing in the trench that day; even Billy had 
lost his voice, and it wasn 't often he was without 
a song to cheer us with. 

Nothing but growls and curses, and the swish, 
swish, swish of the rain. Up on the firing step 
the sentries, with the water running from their 
helmets, were staring over the top, but they 
couldn't see anything but the rain. There 
didn't seem to be much need of their being there, 
for the Germans weren't going to attack in such 
weather. The fight must have been taken all 
out of those Huns, as it was out of us. 

And yet one of them did come — just one — 



70 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

througli all that rain and mud. But lie hadn't 
come to fight. He came wallowing through the 
mud and water like a half -drowned rat, with his 
hands above his head, and crying, ^^Kamerad! 
Kamerad ! ' ' 

The sentries let him pass, and as he jumped 
into the trench the splash he sent up half blinded 
us. 

^*How did you get here!" asked the Sergeant, 
when Fritzie had come to the surface and had 
blown the water out of his mouth. 

^^Ach! Mein Gott!'' cried Fritzie. ^^I 
svimmed here.'' 

Then he told how when nobody was looking 
he had climbed out of his own trench, which 
he said was in even worse shape than ours, and 
had crawled over the sand bags into the mud. 
In all the rain the German sentries didn't notice 
him, but for the first few yards he was afraid 
to stand up and crawled through the mud, where 
sometimes he sank so deep that he thought he 
was lost. Once he fell into a shell hole, and 
sank in mud and water to his neck. He thought 
he would never get out of that hole, but he man- 
aged it at last. 

Then he lost his way, and splashed about for 



^^HAED LUCK" PEOPHESIES 71 

hours. At last lie came up against our wires, 
but he didn't know whether they were ours or 
the Germans \ He lay there listening, and after 
a time heard somebody calling in English. 

He told us he had had enough of fighting and 
had been trying to get aw^ay for weeks. He had 
been told that the English tortured their prison- 
ers, but long before the war he had been a waiter 
in a London hotel and had learned so much 
about the English then that he didn't believe 
what he had heard about us in the trenches. 

That night the dug-outs were too full of wa- 
ter to sleep in, and we stayed in the trenches. 
Oh, what a night ! Eain, rain, rain ! It never 
stopped. And all night long the cold, muddy 
water half covered us. Some of the men 
dropped asleep standing up. Sometimes one 
of them would lose his balance, fall over into 
the water with a big splash and disappear. 
Then he would come floundering up from the 
bottom with the sleep all washed out of him, 
and mad as a hatter. That happened to Billy 
Matchett once, and when I saw him coming up 
from under the water blowing and puffing I 
thought of the worrying he had done on our 
first day at the front about how he was going to 



72 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

get his regular daily bath, for he had been a 
natty chap back in Liverpool. We had just 
gone into the first-line trench, when he asked of 
a Black Watcher: 

^ ^ Tell me, old top : how do w^e get our morn- 
ing tub T' 

^^You gets it when it rains," said the Black 
Watcher. *^And then you gets it good.'' 

For an hour or two after he heard that, Billy 
lost all interest in trench life. He had been 
talking about baths and dreaming about them 
ever since. And now that he was getting a good 
one he was no more satisfied than he had been 
before. 

We thought the lads out on ^* night ops" be- 
tween the lines were lucky for once, for they 
didn't have to spend the night in water and could 
move about and get warm. But when they 
came back, just before daylight, we found they 
hadn't been so lucky after all. We were a hard- 
looking lot ourselves by that time, and they 
looked even worse than we. 

They had been on the go all night in mud so 
deep and sticky that every step was hard work. 
Sometimes they had sunk in it to their knees. 
They were covered all over with it, and we 



*^HARD LUCK" PEOPHESIES 73 

couldn't recognize our best friends among them. 

They told us they had spent the worst night 
of their lives, and that there wasn't one of them 
who hadn't fallen into a shell hole where he 
went out of sight in the mud. Once they had 
been so close to the enemy trench that they 
heard what the Boches were saying, and they 
had stayed to listen to some of Fritzie's sad 
songs. The Boches will sing no matter how un- 
happy they may be, but when things go wrong 
their songs are about as cheerful as a funeral 
march. 

About noon that day the rain stopped, and 
before long the sun came out. But that didn't 
help matters much, because the water and mud 
in the trench were as bad as ever. At last the 
pumps got the water out, but a good part of the 
sun-baked mud stuck to us as long as we were 
up in front. 



CHAPTER X 

^^GivE, 'em the bayonet!'' 

A BIG push was coming. We all knew it, 
though how is more than I can say. For 
days the word had been going about that we 
were going to get after Fritzie hard and send 
him back a little nearer to where he came from. 

*'It's about time," growled Big Tom, ^Hhat 
this blinkin' lot of blighters got another name 
than the ^Scruffy Fifth,' and here's our chance 
to get it if we're going after them bloomin' 
Bodies at last. ' ' 

The ^^ Scruffy Fifth" we were called because 
we were so grimy and buggy, but it wasn't 
through any fault of ours. How could we be any- 
thing else but scruffy when we hadn 't been able 
to wash our faces since we got to the trenches ? 
I'd have bet my pay that a lot of others who 
gave us that name were no cleaner than we. I 
never could understand why they picked us out 
for that title, when the whole army should have 

74 



^^GIVE 'EM THE BAYONET!'' 75 

had it if anybody. But we had got it, and there 
wasn't a lad among us who didn't make up 
his mind, when he heard the big push was com- 
ing, that the ''Scruffy Fifth" would win a bet- 
ter name, if we all had to die for it. 

One evening the word was passed around that 
we were going over the top some time before 
morning, and before long we were told that the 
time was set for midnight sharp. 

I had heard enough from the old-timers to 
know what that meant. It meant that a lot of 
us would be killed, and a lot more wounded. I 
couldn't help feeling nervous and jumpy. A 
good deal worse I should have felt, too, if I 
hadn't killed that big Hun in the raid, but that 
put heart into me and made me sure that, even 
though I was only a ninety-six pounder, I was 
going to have an even chance with those six-foot- 
ers from Prussia. 

''Go for their stomachs. Tommy," I kept say- 
ing to myself. ' ' Go for their stomachs. Dodge 
under their bayonets, and get 'em from below." 

We spent a lot of time cleaning our guns and 
making sure our bayonets were in good shape, 
and the bombers tilled their haversacks with 
enough stuff to blow up the whole German line. 



76 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

Twenty minutes before midnight every man 
of US was ready and waiting. Those minutes 
of waiting were the hardest part of all that 
night's work, for it was only then that we had 
any time to think, and worry, and wonder what 
was going to happen to us. And that little bit 
of time dragged along as if it were hours. I 
never knew the men to be so quiet ; no tallying, 
no laughing, no singing. If we had been old 
timers it wouldn 't have mattered, and we should 
have been as cheerful as ever, but a lad does 
a lot of hard thinking just before his first time 
over the top. 

Twelve o 'clock came. Up we went and over. 

It was a black night, but dozens of rockets 
were going up, and the way lay clear before us. 
Our wire cutters had cut wide lanes in our fences 
for us, and we crowded through them. The 
artillery and the machine guns were going like 
mad. The bullets w^ere singing all around us. 

Some of our men fell. One toppled over 
right in front of me, so close that I had to run 
over him. If he was dead it didn 't matter and 
if wounded I doubt if my ninety-six pounds hurt 
him much. 

A shell whizzed along just above us. I felt 



*^GIVE 'EM THE BAYONET!" 77 

the wind from it. It was so close that it lifted 
the caps from some of the men's heads. 

Once I stumbled and fell. For a moment I 
lay there feeling myself all over, wondering if 
I had been hit. When I had made sure I was 
all right I jumped up and ran on. By that time 
the men were well ahead of me. As I tried to 
catch up a shell burst among them and I saw 
some bodies flying into the air. 

Then the way began to be filled with dead and 
wounded. Some of the wounded were dragging 
themselves over the ground, trying to get into 
shell holes or back to our trenches. I passed a 
man who was kneeling by the side of a dying lad 
whose legs had been blown off. The man on 
his knees was our chaplain. I heard him pray- 
ing as I went by. A brave man was Father 
O'Brien — brave and good, and careless of his 
own life when there were wounded lads who 
needed him. He had gone over the top with the 
first of us, though I have known of many a chap- 
lain who would never do that and who would 
wait for the wounded to be brought to him be- 
hind the lines. 

Over to the right a big tank, the first I had 
ever seen in action, was bobbing along toward 



78 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

the German line. It broke througli the wires 
as if they had been no more than cobwebs, and 
came to a stop right over the Germans' first 
trench, with all its guns spouting. 

I was almost there now, and I saw our lads 
piling in on top of the Huns. Ow ! How they 
did pile in on them ! Even the artillery couldn 't 
drown the chorus of yells and groans that came 
up from that tangle of fighters. It was like a 
whole menagerie of starved wildcats let loose. 
I didn't think of anything then but of jumping 
into the fight. There wasn't time to be afraid. 

As I reached the trench I came up in front of 
a big Hun, who was standing on the parapet with 
his gun raised over his head and his bayonet 
pointing down at me. 

I ducked my head and went for him. I 'd have 
been a goner if I hadn 't. It was my only chance. 
His bayonet must have slid over me just as my 
own got him in the stomach. He threw up his 
arms, his gun came tumbling over me, and he 
went down on his knees, while his body slowly 
crumpled up into a heap. 

It's queer what thoughts sometimes come into 
a chap's mind at such moments. As I jabbed 
him the words of that Welsh Fusilier ran 




One of our lads brought the butt of a gun down on his head 



^^GIVE ^EM THE BAYONET!^' 79 

through my head: ^ ^You'll know the Lord is 
glad every time you stick your bayonet into a 
Hun." And I did know it. I knew the Lord 
was fighting on our side, as Father 'Brien had 
told us, and that I was doing His work. 

A good many of our men had jumped clear 
over that first trench and had gone on to the 
next, but when I made the leap I landed in the 
bottom in a heap. It isn't easy to make a long 
jump with a rifle in your hands unless you're 
long in the legs, and I'm not. 

When I got to my feet I saw a German coming 
for me. I jumped back a foot or two just as he 
made a lunge for me with his bayonet, and he 
missed me by an inch. He was going at me 
again, when one of our lads brought the butt of 
a gun down on his head and knocked him cold. 

About twenty feet away there were some more 
Germans, but before I had to worry about them 
a bomber did the trick for the whole lot. There 
were six of them. The bomb killed three and 
tore the others up so badly that they couldn't 
have lived very long. 

By that time the first trench was fairly well 
cleaned out. The only Germans left in it were 
dead or wounded except the prisoners, and there 



80 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

were a lot of them. Fritzie will fight hard un- 
til he sees the game is up, and then he doesn't 
lose any time in throwing up his hands and cry- 
ing, ^^Kamerad!'' 

It was while I was watching those prisoners 
that I learned what a tricky, savage beast 
Fritzie can be. There was one among them who 
managed to get his hand into his coat, and from 
it he pulled out a bomb. He was about to throw 
it into a group of our men when somebody ran 
him through with a bayonet. The bomb 
dropped to the ground. It didn't explode, and 
the man who had killed him picked it up and 
threw it over the top. It burst with an awful 
crash a few yards away, but no one was hurt. 

After that I climbed up to see what had be- 
come of the lads who had gone on to the second 
trench. There was a lot of fighting going on 
over there, and I decided to make a run for it 
and take a hand in the fuss, for my fighting 
blood was up by that time and I wasn 't thinking 
of danger. 

I went, and luck was with me, for, though the 
artillery and the ^ ^ typewriters ' ' were showering 
all the ground that lay between, I wasn't 
touched. Perhaps it was because I was so much 



''GIVE 'EM THE BAYONET!'' 81 

smaller than the rest and harder to hit. I have 
often thought there was something in that no- 
tion, for it always seemed to me there were more 
big men killed than little ones. 

I was almost across to the second trench, when 
I saw a lad from our company crawling toward 
me, wounded. I stopped, thinking I should 
help him. 

' * Go on, kid, and fight, ' ' he cried. ^ ^ It 's only 
a broken leg." 

So I left him and ran on. 

It was the liveliest kind of a fight that I 
jumped into. Our lads and the Huns were all 
mixed up together, clubbing, bayoneting and 
shooting, while our bombers were cleaning out 
the dug-outs fast. 

I killed another Hun in that trench. It was 
easy, for I caught him on my bayonet while he 
was going at somebody else, and he didn't see 
me coming. That made two for me — fairly 
good for a lad of my size, I thought — but I 
didn't get a chance at another, though we cap- 
tured a third trench before the fighting was 
over. 

By the time we got that third trench we liked 
the fighting so much that we didn't want to stop. 



82 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

and we might have gone on to Berlin if our 
officers had let us. That was the place I wanted 
to get to, and I thought I should see it some 
day. I wanted a chance to shake my fist in the 
Kaiser's face, the bloody blighter! and perhaps 
to run a prince along at the end of my bayonet. 

But the fighting was over for that day, though 
there was much work to be done, running the 
prisoners back to the rear, patching up the 
trenches we had won and putting up parapets, 
and we were a tired lot when night came. We 
got some sleep then. 

But out on the shell-pitted ground we had 
crossed there was no sleep for the stretcher 
bearers. Four hundred and fifty of our dead 
and wounded lay out there in the dark, and many 
a fine lad I had known among them. 

Yes, the fimest of all was among them — our 
chaplain, dead beside a dying rifleman. They 
found him on his knees, and they thought at 
first that he was praying. The tears came to 
my eyes when I heard that he was gone, for he 
had been a good friend to me, and there wasn't 
a man among us who didn't love him. Many a 
time after that I thought of him, and sometimes 
when I was feeling homesick, or when the rains 



^'GIVE 'EM THE BAYONET !'' 83 

and the mud and the hard marching were taking 
the heart out of me it seemed to me I heard his 
voice speaking to me, telling me to be brave and 
have faith in God. 



CHAPTER XI 

IT^S THE FIGHTING FIFTH 

GOOD-BYE, old ' ' Scruffy Fifth ! ^ ^ It 's the 
^'Fighting Fifth'' now. Ask any British 
soldier who was at Ypres in the summer of 1917 
what they called the Liverpool Fifth Battalion. 
Ask a London Scottie or a Welsh Fusilier; ask 
the Bantams or the Ghurkas, for they were all 
there, and any one of them will answer, ^^The 
^Fightingi Fifth' is their name, and they've 
earned it." 

From the night we took the three German 
trenches at the loss of so many of our men we 
began to hear that new name, and it wasn't 
many days before we were known by it every- 
where. And I can tell you I was proud of it. 
I belonged to the * ' Fighting Fifth, ' ' and the old 
fighters in the lines would have to forget that 
they had called me *^the Scruffies' mascot." 
We all went about with our chests sticking out as 
if every one of us had won the V. C, and we 

84 



IT'S THE FIGHTING FIFTH 85 

no longer envied even the Black Watch, famous 
though they were and heroes of many battles. 

*^It's about time, I'm thinking," said Big 
Tom, **that since we're the Scruffies no more 
they should send us back where we can get a 
little water to wash our faces with, to say noth- 
ing of washing all over." 

We had been in the front trenches a month, 
and I know my own face hadn 't been washed in 
all that time, except in the muddy water that we 
wallowed in when it rained, for clean water was 
too scarce to use for washing. But at last we 
were told that we were going back to rest bil- 
lets, and that every one of us was going to have 
a bath. It made us all happy except Bonesey. 

^^ Blimey!" he grumbled. ^'I don't know as 
I take to this hidea of a bath, it's so long since 
I've 'ad one. It'll give me a cold or worse. 
Wot's the use of washin' us? We're all right 
as we are, and most of us blokes weren't the 
bathin' kind at any time. There's that old 
blighter in A Company that was a tramp before 
the war and that would rather sit up on the 
sand bags for the snipers to shoot at than get 
scrubbed. 'E'll desert to the Germans if this 
bloomin ' bath is forced on 'im. ' ' 



86 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

But Billy Matcliett almost fainted with joy 
when he heard the news. Back in Liverpool 
he had never gone without his morning tub, and 
he had been ashamed to keep company with him- 
self ever since he got to the front. 

We needed that rest, for w^e had lost a lot 
of sleep in the trenches and had fought and 
worked hard. There had been two days when 
we got along on nothing but tea and biscuit, 
for something — I never learned just what the 
trouble was — had gone wrong with the food 
supply, and at the best of times the food hadn 't 
been anything to brag about. We had shivered 
in the wet for days together. We had put up 
with ^^ cooties'' and rats, and the German artil- 
lery had been hammering at us day and night. 
We were fed up with front-trench life when at 
last the order came that sent us back to the 
rear. 

A grimier lot of lads never came out of a coal 
mine than we were when we went marching back 
to our base, five miles away. Our clothes were 
ragged, most of the men hadn't shaved in more 
than a month, and almost all of them had a tired, 
half -wild look in their eyes. No wonder the 
girls we passed wouldn't give us so much as a 



IT'S THE FIGHTING FIFTH 87 

smile and that the children ran away from lis. 
But we didn't care. We were the ^'Fighting 
Fifth." 

Back at the base we got all cleaned up in no 
time, even Bonesey — baths, new clothes, shaves, 
though I didn't have to trouble about the shav- 
ing part of it, not being old enough to grow 
whiskers. I wished those girls we had passed 
could have seen us then. We would have shown 
them what a fine-looking lot the '' Fighting 
Fifth" could be. 

It was an easy, cushy life back at the base 
— nothing to do but lie about most of the time 
and talk and play ^' house" and ^^brag." 
Those are the two card games the soldiers play. 

Poor old Bonesey did love the cards, and we 
hadn't been back at the base two days when he 
had lost his pay playing ^^ house," besides a 
German helmet and a lot of other relics he had 
brought from the front. Even his ^^fags" he 
lost, and he had to borrow smokes to keep him 
going to the next pay day. 

For hours at a time we lay out in the sun 
talking over all we had been through and what 
each of us had done in the big raid on the Ger- 
mans. Bonesey had killed ten men, so he said, 



88 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

but I think he must have counted wrong, for 
some of the lads who had been fighting close to 
him said he killed only one and wounded an- 
other. But Big Tom had killed six, and had 
witnesses to prove it. I don't know how many 
Billy got. He was a brave lad, but wasn 't given 
to bragging. 

We had a theatre back at the base, and Billy 
was one of the singers. Some famous singers 
and players came over from England to enter- 
tain us. Harry Lauder was one of them, and 
the lads gave him a great welcome. Life in 
those dirty old front trenches seemed like a bad 
dream while we were having all those good 
times. 

When it rained we crept into dug-outs or 
shacks or houses, but in fair weather we were 
out under the sky day and night. At night, 
lying in our blankets on the ground, we watched 
the shells and rockets shooting up into the sky, 
and were glad we were out of all that danger 
for a while. We could lie there, clean and quiet 
and peaceful, and watch the stars twinkle while 
we thought about our people at home and of 
how good it would be to get back there. 

All kinds of people we met at those rest bil- 



IT^S THE FIGHTING FIFTH 89 

lets — Belgian women and children who had been 
driven from their homes by the Germans, old 
Frenchmen who had been in the Franco-Prus- 
sian war, and men in our own army who had 
served for many years and had fought in many 
lands. 

There was Sergeant Doyle, of our own regi- 
ment, who had fought in India and with Kitch- 
ener in the Soudan, and who had many a tale 
to tell of what he had been through. A very 
different kind of fighting it had been to what 
we knew in Belgium; fighting with never a 
trench nor dug-out, tank nor gas ; fighting with 
the army on the move all the time and with the 
cavalry playing as big a part as the infantry. 
It all seemed as strange to us lads as the old 
days of the knights in armour, yet Sergeant 
Doyle was the younger side of fifty and it 
couldn't have been so very many years ago. I 
suppose that when I am a grey-headed gaffer 
the way we fought in Belgium will seem as 
strange to the young soldiers as the way Ser- 
geant Doyle fought in the Soudan did to us. 

And there was Fogarty, who had fought 
against the Mad Mullah in Somaliland and 
against the savages in South Africa, and who 



90 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

had wounds to show for it. Once he and a few 
other men had been surrounded on the desert 
by more than two hundred of the Mad Mullah's 
soldiers. 

*^We dropped into a hollow,'' Fogarty told 
us, as we lay out in a field one night under the 
stars, ^^and though there were only twelve of 
us, we made it so hot for those Arabs that they 
didn't dare come near. But they were on all 
sides of us, and we couldn 't get away. All day 
we lay there, and the heat was fit to kill. Then 
the night came down, but there wasn't a chance 
to sneak off in the dark, for the lines were 
drawn too close around us. We might hold 
them off, for they weren't too eager to lose a 
lot of men by rushing us, but it was the fear 
of thirst that worried us the most. Our wa- 
ter bottles were almost empty, and we didn't 
dare take another drink. Our throats were so 
dry we couldn't speak above a whisper. And 
then morning came, and the sun came up, scorch- 
ing hot, and the thirst drove us almost mad. 
Some of the men could stand it no longer, and 
drained their bottles dry, but the rest of us 
kept what few drops we had and only moistened 
our lips, not knowing how long we might be 



IT^S THE FIGHTING FIFTH 91 

there. Before that day was over two of the 
men who had drained their bottles went crazy, 
and were for going out and fighting their way 
through the Arabs alone. We had to hold them 
back, and they fought us with their fists till the 
strength was all gone out of them. We knew 
we couldn 't stand another day of it, and how we 
kept our senses through the night I don't know. 
The next day broke, and we thought it was our 
last. And then, just as the sun came up over 
the sand, we caught sight of a column of British 
soldiers coming toward us, and we knew we were 
saved. ' ' 

Another night a Frenchman with one arm — he 
was out of the war for good then — told us how 
he had fought in the Battle of the Marne and 
of the vision, that his regiment had seen. Not 
one of us knew more than a few words of 
French, but he could speak English as well as 
anybody, for he had lived for years in Lon- 
don. 

**It was at the end of that great day when we 
turned the Boches back from their drive on 
Paris,'' he told us. *^The greatest day of the 
war it was, for the city was only a few miles 
away, and the whole world thought the Kaiser 



92 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

was going to get it. But we drove liis big army 
back, weak though we were. That evening there 
came a blaze of light over in the northern sky, 
and above it, among the clouds, we saw Joan of 
Arc on a white horse leading her army. You 
may doubt it, but I tell you I saw it with my own 
eyes, and so did thousands of others, and to- 
day the story is told all over France. There 
can have been no doubt of what we saw ; it was 
seen by too many to leave any question. If only 
I myself had seen it I might have thought I had 
been dreaming, but the whole regiment told the 
same story, and I saw many men fall down 
on their knees as they stared at it, while others 
cheered as if they took it as a sign from Heaven 
that France would be saved.'' 

The Tommies blew out a lot of cigarette 
smoke as he finished that story, and they said 
not a word. It was a queer one, I'll admit, and 
hard to swallow, but I heard it later in France 
from many a soldier who had fought at the 
Marne. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE MAD WOMAN OF YPKES 

WE thought we had learned in the trenches 
what a bad lot the Bodies w^ere, but 
after we had been back at the base a few days 
we knew far worse things about them. Many 
a story we heard of the black things they had 
done that made us feel like going out and try- 
ing to wipe out the whole bloody army of them, 
if we had to die for it. 

It had been a fine country around Ypres, full 
of lovely gardens and splendid houses, before 
the Huns got there, but the gardens were ruined 
now, and so were the big homes they belonged 
to. 

One day Billy, Bonesey and I were out for a 
stroll, when we came to a big chateau. At the 
foot of the road that led up to it stood a lodge 
which had been battered by shells and was fall- 
ing to pieces. Inside the gate in what was left 
of a great flower garden were rows and rows of 
little wooden crosses that marked the graves 

93 



94 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

of soldiers. The chateau, like the lodge, was 
half ruined. Every window in it was broken, 
and shells had torn great holes through the 
roof. 

We went inside, and there we saw what a 
wreck the Huns had made of all the expensive 
furnishings. They had slashed the tapestries 
on the walls, chopped chairs and tables to pieces, 
broken mirrors, and used their knives on the 
woodwork without any other reason than love 
of mutilating things. Even the fine piano they 
had hacked to pieces. 

We were looking about at all this ruin, and 
Billy was talking loudly of what devils the 
Boches were, when an old man stepped up and 
spoke to us. He was a wrinkled, white-haired, 
stoop-shouldered old fellow, and his voice was 
not much more than a whisper. He spoke in 
broken English, with a lot of French words 
mixed in, but Billy knew a little French, and we 
managed to understand what he was saying. 

He told us that for fifty years he had been a 
servant of the family that owned the chateau. 
When the Germans were coming through Bel- 
gium the family had hurried over into France 
just in time to escape, but the old man had said, 



THE MAD WOMAN OF YPRES 95 

*^No ; I shall not go. This has been my home 
always, and I shall live and die here." 

Then his two grandsons — only boys they were, 
younger than I — said they would stay with 
their grandfather, no matter what might hap- 
pen. 

The Huns came, and the old man tried to keep 
them out of the chateau, telling them it had 
been left in his care and he must protect it, 
but while he pleaded with them a soldier knocked 
him down with his gun. The blow made him 
unconscious for a while. When he came to life 
again he found that he had been dragged out 
into the garden and was lying there alone on 
the ground. 

After lying there some time, he managed to 
get to his feet, and began to look about for his 
grandsons. He couldn't find them. At last he 
learned that the Germans had brought some 
charge against them, and had marched them 
away to be shot. He wouldn't believe it until 
he found some persons who had seen them killed 
and who told him everything. And they were 
not the only young boys the Germans killed on 
the charge of being spies or of firing on the sol- 
diers. 



96 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

^^Some day,'' the old man said, ^^tlie master 
and his family will come back and the old cha- 
teau will be made over, but I may not live to 
see that time. But I mean to live long enough 
to see the Boches beaten and punished. I know 
you will fight hard and win, you Englishmen. 
It is the Lord's work you are doing." 

More stories as dreadful as that old man 's we 
heard as we went about over the country. 
Women who had lost their husbands and chil- 
dren told them to us. Children told them to 
us who had lost their fathers and mothers. 
And, oh, what hate their eyes showed as they 
spoke of the Boches ! 

At one time while we were speaking with a 
group of children and trying to teach them some 
of the good old English songs, a woman came 
up and questioned them one by one. It was 
always the same question: 

*'Have you seen my little Mimi?" 

And the children would alw^ays shake their 
heads. 

A tall, fine-looking woman she was, with sad 
eyes and a soft voice. After she had questioned 
them all, she stood a moment staring at me, 
then at Bonesey, then at Billy, without saying 



THE MAD WOMAN OF YPEES 97 

another word. And then she began to cry very 
softly, and walked away. 

*^It's the mad woman/' one of the children 
told us, and we learned how the Huns had 
killed her little Mimi, leaving the mother all 
alone in the world, for her husband had fallen 
while fighting for his country. 

Hearing such dreadful things made us so sad 
and gloomy that we were glad to get back to 
where the Tommies could cheer us with their 
jokes and their singing. Often I would lie 
awake at night long after the other lads had 
fallen asleep, and think over the stories I had 
heard, and wonder whether savages had ever 
been worse than those German devils that were 
trying to wipe us out. I made up my mind to 
kill as many of them as I could, and never to 
try to take a prisoner. And I told myself, too, 
that I should rather be killed than be taken pris- 
oner by them. There are some kind Huns, I 
suppose, just as there are kind savages, but I 
had heard of some of our soldiers who had fallen 
into the hands of the bad ones and who had been 
tortured. 

Glad we were when we could forget now and 
then the mad country we were in and all the 



98 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

mad tilings that were being done there, and 
bring our thoughts back to the good old days in 
England. It was good to hear old Bonesey tell 
stories of his housebreaking and of how he 
would manage to fool the bobbies. He didn't 
always fool them, for he had been caught and 
sent to prison several times, but he must have 
been a clever lad in his line if half of what he 
told us was true. I asked Martin, the Scotland 
Yard man, about him one day, and he said, 

^^Yes, your friend Bonesey is a hard un, and 
some day when the war's over I may have to 
send him to prison myself. But I hope not. 
He's been too good a soldier. Better reform 
him. Mascot, while you've the chance." 

I did try to reform Bonesey, but it wasn't any 
use. 

*^Wot! Me be honest!" he would say, as he 
winked one eye at Billy. ^^Why, bless yer 
bloomin' 'eart. Mascot, I don't know wot bein' 
honest is. Back to the 'ousebreakin' trade I'm 
go in' when the war's over. But I'd sort of like 
to get a V. C. meantimes. With that on me it 
would sort of make me seem respectable in my 
line of work." 

*^ Don't you be trying to change a high-class 



THE MAD WOMAN OF YPRES 99 

burglar into something he's not fitted for/' put 
in Billy. ** Every man to his trade is what I 
say, if he's good at it. There's chaplains I 
know of that are such cowards they stay behind 
the lines and wait for the dying soldiers to be 
brought back before they'll pray over them. 
And there's a lad I know who was only a beg- 
gar in the streets of Liverpool before the war, 
yet he's as brave as the best of them when it 
comes to bringing in the wounded from out in 
front. It's not what a man is outside, or what 
he calls himself; it's what he is inside that 
counts. Just remember — " 

'^Aw, shut up with the preachin'," grumbled 
Bonesey. ^^It's an actor you are, Billy Match- 
ett, and I'm tellin' yer now you're no account 
at the preachin'. A jail bird the Mascot 'ere 
would be if he listened to you, for you're so 
mixed up with wot you're tryin' to say that 
you'd 'ave him believin' a burglar's honest and 
an honest man's a burglar. Every man to his 
trade, and an actor to 'is, is wot I'm thinkin'." 



CHAPTER XIII 

SOLDIEES THREE 

BECAUSE a tin rooster hung over the door, 
Billy called it Chanticleer Tavern,- but 
it had a French name that I never could pro- 
nounce. The wine they sold there was just to 
Billy's taste, and, as there was good food too, 
he and I were often in the Chanticleer together 
of an evening. It was there that we met the 
red-headed tanker, and his friends the one-eared 
sniper and the fat miner. 

They all three came in together one night and 
sat down at our table. Being a chummy lot, 
they were soon telling us of some of the things 
they had been through. I thought I had had 
a bit of adventure myself since coming to the 
front, but it was nothing to what those three 
lads had seen. 

**I was in a tank at the Somme, where we 
gave the Boches the surprise of their lives,'' 
said the red-headed one, and he dipped a finger 

100 



SOLDIERS THREE 101 

in his beer and drew wet lines on the table to 
show how the trenches had lain. 

*^Over here,'' he said, as he daubed with his 
'finger, ^^were the Boches, and over there were 
we, and here was the river. The artillery had 
been pounding the Boches hard, and there was 
nothing much left of their front trenches, but 
their fences were still up, and our infantry 
might have been shot to pieces before they 
could get through them. 

*^ 'Twas then they sent us tankers into the 
tight. Along we rattled, swaying and bumping 
and rolling, with the bullets buzzing against our 
old steel shell and making not so much as a dent. 
And behind came the infantry, with us protect- 
ing them. We got to those wire fences, and 
we went through them without so much as a 
pause, and the infantry poured in after through 
the big lanes we made. 

<<The ground was all full of shell holes, but 
we never stopped. We would drop into a 
crater, and climb out again, and into another 
and up again, and though the old tank 'most 
bumped the skin off of us she never got a 
puncture. She was afraid of nothing. Right 
up to a machine gun she'd crawl, and look 



102 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

at it, and blaze away at the gunners, then squash 
right over it. 

^*0f a sudden came a bump that sent us 
sprawling against her inside s and raised welts 
all over us. She had tumbled into a crater 
as big as a volcano's, and we thought for a sec- 
ond she was done for. But she righted herself 
as easy as if she was a jumping kangaroo, and 
went purring along as fresh and sound as ever. 

**That crater was full of Boches — two hun- 
dred of them at least, I should say, though we 
didn't have time to do any counting. And as 
we tumbled in we had squashed down on almost 
half of them and flattened them out like pan- 
cakes. 

i I (ji]^^ j,gg|. ^QYe around us thick as flies, and 
we blazed away at them with our guns, and 
rolled over them, and backed up and rolled over 
some more. They were running around like 
rats in a pit with a dog after them. They came 
swarming up over our shell, firing their pistols 
at it and jabbing at it with their bayonets, but 
they couldn't so much as scratch it. 

^'Then, finding they couldn't rip us open, they 
jumped down into the crater and rushed for the 
sides, where they tried to climb out and escape. 



SOLDIERS THREE 103 

But we shot them down by dozens as they tried 
it. 

^^All along the line the other tanks were go- 
ing ahead, through wires and over shell holes 
and through big craters, just as we were, mow- 
ing the Boches down by hundreds. Nothing 
could stop them. The infantry swept along 
with them, fighting like devils, and we all had 
the Huns scared blue. It was a great victory 
we won that day, as you lads have doubtless 
heard before. 

^ ' But maybe it wasn 't hot inside that old tank ! 
One hundred degrees and more, if it was any- 
thing at all. Stripped to the waist we were, 
and some of us stark naked, and the sweat was 
running off us in streams. And every time she 
bumped into a hole we would go bumping 
against her insides till we were scratched and 
bruised and black and blue all over. 

^^And maybe the army didn't cheer us when 
we got back! Oh, for a few minutes we lads 
were the heroes. You should have heard the 
regiments yell when they caught sight of us, all 
bruised and black and grease-smeared as we 
were. ' ' 

^^ That's all well enough," spoke up the fat 



104 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

man, ^*but IVe been through more myself." 

He had eyes as round and sharp as a bird's, 
that lad, and a neck like a bull's. 

*^I've been through more myself," he said, 
^ * and I '11 lay my pay that I 've sent more Huns 
to hell than ever did that blinkin' tank of yours. 
There was once we planted a string of mines 
that blew up a whole German front line, and the 
Boches were flying up in the air as thick as the 
stones when the crash came. And most of 'em 
came down in small pieces. 

^^ There was another time when, as we were 
burrowing out under No Man's Land we heard 
the Huns scratching away close to us digging a 
tunnel of their own. We broke the head of 
our shaft into theirs, and there we were face to 
face with 'em in the dark. It was dark enough 
with the lights going, but they were put out, 
and then it was black as ink. We groped for 
those Huns down there under the ground where 
we couldn't see our hands before our faces, and 
we fought 'em with our picks. And some- 
times we fought with our bare hands. 

**I bumped into a man, and I didn't know 
whether he was friend or foe till I'd taken him 
by the throat and then had loosened his pipe 



SOLDIERS THREE 105 

a second to let him yell. When I heard him I 
knew he was Boche, and I tightened up his pipe 
again till he went limp in my hands. 

^ ^ Then the lights went out once more, and we 
could see just enough to tell wliicli were Bodies 
and which were our own. We cleaned out their 
shaft without a shot fired, and the Huns over in 
the trench never knew what was happening. 
Then we went through their tunnel till we came 
to their trench. We took a look into it, and saw 
a lot of Germans close by. We tossed some 
bombs into the thick of 'em and must have 
cleaned up about twenty. And we got back to 
our own line safe and sound except three lads 
the Boches had killed while we were fighting in 
the dark.'' 

The one-eared lad put his elbows on the ta- 
ble and asked Billy for a fag. He was as thin 
as the miner was fat, and the one ear that he 
had left stuck out so straight that he had a 
funny, lop-sided look. 

^^Now I'm not sayin' my two pals here 
haven't done a few things in this bloomin' war," 
he said, as he struck a match, ^'but it's only once 
in weeks they get a chance at the Boches, while 
I'm the lad that's gettin' 'em all the time. 



106 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

Snipin' is my job, and I Ve got upwards of two 
liundred Huns to my credit by now. 

^^One day I lay out in a clump of grass be- 
hind our line when a new German regiment had 
come up to the front. A green, careless lot they 
were, and it was little they knew about us snip- 
ers. Never have I had easier pickings than 
those lads. Every few minutes one of ^em 
would be sure to show himself a couple of inches 
or so above the top, and if he was there more 
than a second I'd be fairly sure to get him. I 
kept count, and it was twenty-three men that 
dropped to my gun that day. 

** There was a hole in their parapet where 
old-timers w^ould have known enough to bend 
down as they passed it, but it took a long time 
for those new lads to learn that much. I'd 
keep my blinkers on that spot, and every few 
minutes a head would pass by and I'd let go at 
it. I got a dozen in that one place." 

^^But it's little good you snipers are when 
it comes to takin' trenches," put in the red- 
headed tanker. '^And you lie all day behind 
the line in your clump of grass and run no 
bloomin' danger at all to speak of. And you 
have it cool and easy, while we tankers are 



SOLDIERS THREE 107 

sweatin' and skinnin' our hides against the 
iron. ' ^ 

^*And are you tryin' to tell me we run no 
danger!" growled the sniper, putting his hand 
over the place where his ear was missing. 
*^ Where's that bloomin' ear of mine gone? 
Tell me that now. It was shot off by a Boche 
sniper, that's what it was. And when they find 
out where we are their machine guns pepper us, 
and we're lucky if we get away with our lives. 
Danger! It's little a tanker knows about dan- 
ger, stuck away safe inside his shell where the 
bullets can't get him." 

That's the way they were giving it to one 
another, back and forth, when there came a 
crash that sent the chairs from under us and 
sent us sprawling on the floor. The whole 
building rocked with it, and I thought the walls 
were coming down. We ran out, and found that 
a shell had exploded a few feet outside the 
door. Just as we got outside another struck 
close by. We must have broken some running 
records for the next minute. 



CHAPTER XIV 

BOMBS 

UP to the trenches again we went when we 
had been two weeks in rest billets. They 
were not the same trenches we had left, for the 
whole line had been pushing forward while we 
were resting. Fritzie had been getting a hard 
pounding day after day, and he must have been 
sorry more than once that he started that war. 
Part of our new trench ran into a wood, 
which was a black, creepy-looking place at 
night. There had been more than one hot fight 
in that gloomy spot, and many men had been 
killed there. The trees were all torn by shell 
fire, and many of them were no more than 
stripped, dead trunks, sticking up like poles. 
I didn't like that wood. It looked so dismal 
that it took the heart out of me every time I 
set my eyes on it. I never looked at it that 
I didn't think of all the lads that had fallen there 
and of those that had lain for hours wounded 

108 



BOMBS 109 

and suffering under the trees. It's strange 
what a difference the bright sunshine makes. 
If it hadn't been for those trees and the dark 
shadows they cast I shouldn 't have thought half 
so much about all the terrible things that had 
happened on that bit of ground. 

As for the trench, it was about as bad as the 
one we had been in before, and we knew that 
if it rained we should be wallowing in mud 
again. 

**I hear some of the Huns have pianos, and 
electric lamps, and arm-chairs and nice cement 
floors and walls in their trenches," said Big 
Tom. ^^How'd you like to be one of them 
Huns ? Never any mud, and when you want to 
have a little rest and a smoke there's a nice 
plush-covered easy chair for you with a foot- 
stool in front of it. And when you're feeling 
blue you go and play a little piece on the piano. 
Wish we could find a trench like that. I'm 
thinkin' the Boches wouldn't keep it long." 

We thought Big Tom was joking, but later 
we met men who had captured cement-lined 
trenches and who had seen officers' dug-outs so 
grand that a prince would think he was back 
home in his palace. 



no THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

^^I wonder if there are any rats in this new- 
hole they've brought us to," said Billy. 

He found out when he crept into his dug-out 
for the night. The rats were there all right. 
And so was the mud. The lads that built that 
trench hadn't taken any lessons from the Huns 
with the pianos. 

Fritzie gave us a warm welcome by sending 
over a lot of trench-mortar bombs, along with 
other presents, such as whiz-bangs, pip-squeaks 
and minniewurfers. They always had been 
generous with gifts of that sort, but they were 
more free-handed than usual when we arrived. 
I suppose they wanted to make sure we knew 
they were there. 

The trench mortar would go oif with a big 
click, so we knew the bomb was coming a second 
or two before it reached us. When we heard 
the click we would dive for the dug-outs. We 
heard the click the very first day in the trench, 
and I and two other lads tumbled into a dug- 
out that was right behind us so fast that we 
sprawled over one another. Then we heard 
the bomb hit the ground with a thud. About a 
second later it went off. We heard the timbers 
crashing around us, and the whole dug-out went 



BOMBS 111 

to pieces. I thought that ended the war for us. 
We were buried under earth and timbers, and 
everything went black. 

I was a bit surprised when I discovered I 
wasn't dead. I couldn't move and there must 
have been a ton of stuff on top of me, but I 
could breathe, and I didn't feel any pain. In 
a few minutes they dug us out, and the three 
of us were as sound as ever except for a few 
scratches and a lot of dirt in our eyes and 
mouths. 

**It's well for the Fighting Fifth that they 
didn't kill our mascot," said Billy. ^*Our luck 
would have been spoiled for the rest of the 
war. ' ' 

^^No need to worry," put in Big Tom. 
**We'd get another mascot soon enough. Any- 
thing will do for a mascot — a cat, a dog, or any 
old thing; it don't matter so long as we've got 
one. And one kind's as lucky as another." 

It wasn't long before Fritzie got a lesson from 
us about how to use bombs. One day a man 
named Edwards, who came from near my home 
in Liverpool, where I had known him well, and 
who had fought in South Africa, said he thought 
we had stood about enough from the Germans 



112 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

and that he was going to take some of the fresh- 
ness out of them. 

That evening he went over the top alone with 
a load of bombs. It was fairly dark, and there 
was a mist hanging close to the ground, so the 
Germans didn't see him coming. He crawled 
up to their trench, pulled out his wire cutter, 
made a hole in their fence and went through. 
The Germans didn't get sight of him till he 
jumped right in on top of them. He had a 
bomb in his hand and when he struck the bottom 
of the trench he held it up so they could all see 
it, and said, loud enough for them to hear: 

^^ Hands up, or I'll give you this to whack 
amongst you!" 

I don't know whether they understood what 
he said, they being nothing but Germans, but 
they saw the bomb all right, and they knew 
what was going to happen if their hands didn 't 
go up. So up their hands went. 

He managed to bring every one of those Huns 
back with him to our line*— sixteen of them. 

He missed the honour that was coming to him, 
for he was killed the next day, but his widow 
got the military cross for what he had done. 



CHAPTER XV 

GKOPING IN THE DAKK 

A FEW days later a patrol party was being 
made up, and I wanted to be in it. The 
Sergeant wouldn't take me at first, saying I was 
too young for such work, but he changed his 
mind later, and I went along. 

There were fifteen of us, and every one in the 
lot was glad of the chance. We waited till some 
time after dark, and then we stole out. It 
couldn't have been a better night for a patrol, 
for it was as black as ink — no moon, no stars, 
and a thick fog that hung close to the ground. 
We couldn 't see three feet in front of us, and the 
Huns didn't have a blooming chance of seeing 
us. Close together we kept, for we had to. We 
would never have found one another again if 
we had got separated. The Sergeant had a 
compass — an illuminated one that shone in the 
dark — and that showed us the way. 

We made straight for the Germans' line, for 
the Sergeant had a plan for dropping a few 

113. 



114 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

bombs into their trench. He kept count of his 
steps, measuring the distance as well as he 
could, and when he thought we must be close 
to their wires we all got down and crawled. 

Just then a star-shell went up that sent a 
blaze of light through the fog. The fence was 
so close that we could have reached out and 
touched it. And right in front of us we got 
sight of a German guard looking over the top. 
We heard him give a surprised grunt, and we 
knew he had seen us. The next second his gun 
went off, and one of our men gave a groan 
and rolled over, dead. Maybe we didn't do 
some fast crawling after that! 

^^Keep down!'' our Sergeant whispered. 
* ^ Drop into the first shell hole you find. ' ' 

The Huns' typewriters were going, and we 
could hear the bullets singing over our heads. 
Then a star-shell went up, and we stopped till 
the light went out. We had crawled a few 
yards and were beginning to think the worst was 
over, when we heard the thud of a bomb hitting 
the ground close by. I could hear my heart 
beat as I waited for the crash. I might have 
tried running, but I didn't know where the 
thing lay, whether in front of us or behind. 



GROPING IN THE DARK 115 

and it was about as safe to lie still as to take 
a chance of diving right into it. 

It must have been fairly close, for the crash 
lifted me right up from the ground a foot or 
two. I came down with a bump that knocked 
the breath out of me, and the flying earth came 
down over me in a shower. 

I expected another one to come any second, 
and I crawled off as fast as I could. After a 
minute I stopped and listened, but there wasn't 
a sound but the typewriters. 

^^I'm lost!'' I told myself. '^Where's the 
blooming Sergeant and his compass!" 

I didn't know north, south, east nor west. 
There wasn't anything to do but keep on crawl- 
ing and trust to luck, and for all I Imew I might 
have to crawl around in No Man's Land all night 
and find myself out there for the Germans to 
shoot in a nice clear sunrise. 

After a few minutes I found a shell hole, and 
dropped into it. It wasn't a very big one but 
good enough for night time. I lay there a 
while thinking hard. There were several things 
I thought of doing. I could stay where I was, 
get my bearings when the sun came up, lie there 
all day, and crawl over to our trench after dark. 



116 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

But that would mean a whole day without food 
and with not much water, and the shell hole 
wasn't any too big for day-time. Or I could 
crawl about till I found a bigger shell hole, 
and try the same plan there. But if I should 
do that there was danger of getting up against 
the German wires and being seen again. 

**0h, keep on crawling,'' I said to myself, 
^ * and take a chance. I 'm as likely to get killed 
one way as another. ' ' 

So I crawled about till the clothes were al- 
most worn off me, and after a time the machine 
guns weren't so noisy and I got to my feet and 
walked. 

I must have been walking for at least an 
hour, and going around in circles, I suppose, for 
I hadn't come to either the Huns' line or ours, 
when I bumped square into a man. I jumped 
back, and so did he. We were both scared half 
to death. We had both jumped so far that 
we could scarcely see each other in the fog, but 
it seemed to me I had caught sight of our own 
uniform. I made ready to run at him with the 
bayonet in case of need, and then I whispered 
at him. 

**I say, you little blinkin' beggar," he called 



GROPING IN THE DARK 117 

back, ^^youVe shortened my bloomin' life ten 
years with the fright I got; that's what you've 
done. ' ' 

It was old ^^ Piccadilly Charlie," one of our 
patrol. 

I asked him if he knew where our trench lay, 
but he was just as much lost as I was. He had 
crawled away when the bomb blew up and had 
been roaming about alone trying to make up his 
mind what to do. 

*^I'm thinkin', Mascot," said Charlie, ^^that 
it's best to just keep on walkin'. If there was 
any other way of passin' the time, well and good, 
but there ain't." 

It must have been about half an hour later 
that we came up against some wires. 

* * It 's an even chance whether it 's the Huns or 
our own," said Charlie. 

We found a break in the fence, and crawled 
through. Charlie was just ahead of me. He 
had almost reached the sand bags, when he 
turned and came crawling back. I knew what 
that meant. We got through the hole in the 
fence again, crawled for a few yards, and then 
walked. Knowing where the Germans were 
helped us a little, for we could keep on going 



118 



THE FIGHTING MASCOT 



straight for a few yards, anyway. As it hap- 
pened, we must have gone fairly straight all the 
way, for before long we found ourselves in 
front of our own trench. 

The Sergeant and six others, one with his 
hand blown off, had got there before us. Two 
others came in the next night, having lain in a 
shell hole all day. Two nights later a patrol 
party found the body of another blown to pieces. 
What became of the rest I don't know. 



4t 



CHAPTEE XVI 

THE LOW-DOWN CUR 

THEEE were a few new soldiers in our com- 
pany when we came out of rest billets. 
One of them was a tall, lank, shifty-eyed lad 
called ^^ Spike.'' I didn't like the look of him 
from the first time I set eyes on him. He was 
a bad one. I'd have laid my pay to that. 
There were men among us who knew all about 
him, and they said he had never done an honest 
day's work in his life till the army took him, 
and that he had been known as a killer back in 
Liverpool. 

^^ Watch out for that rat-eyed blighter," Big 
Tom told us. ^^I'm saying he's a low-down 
cur, and that's not saying half enough about 
him." 

Spike didn't have a friend in the trench ex- 
cept a lad who had been trying ever since he got 
to the front to get somebody to shoot off his 
trigger finger so he could get back to Blighty. 

119 



120 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

The rest of us kept away from him as much as 
we could. 

Spike had heard that Big Tom had been 
saying things about him, and he swore he would 
get even some day. 

** And he will, too, if he gets the chance, '' said 
Big Tom. ^^He was behind the bars once for 
knifing a man in the back, and he's thinking like 
as not about doing that same thing to m^. I 
know the kind he is. He'd never meet a man 
face to face, not he.'' 

Not many men like Spike were among us, but 
there were a few, and some black stories were 
being told about two or three of them. If a 
man wanted to do murder he could find no bet- 
ter place than the front for it, because he could 
blame it on the Germans and nobody would 
know the difference. And such things had been 
done in the trenches, so the stories went. 

^^ We've had others like this new-comer," said 
a chunky little chap who was known as ^ ^ Spud. ' ' 
^ * There was that fox-faced bloke who was killed 
last week for one. I've been thinking he got 
what he deserved when the shell hit him. It was 
no Hun bullet that killed old Kelly a month 
ago. It was that fox-faced blighter's gun that 



THE LOW-DOWN CUR 121 

did it. He had sworn he^d get him, and when 
Kelly fell he was close beside him and his gun 
was smoking. It's easy getting away with a 
deed like that out here.'' 

A few days later Bonesey caught Spike steal- 
ing his fags. Bonesey was a good-natured lad 
as a rule, but before he had managed to get those 
cigarettes he had gone without smoking for 
three days, except when he picked up a butt 
some officer had dropped, and he was red hot 
with rage when he caught Spike trying to steal 
them. Spike got a blow in the jaw that sent him 
sprawling in the mud. When he picked himself 
up he was feeling of his t^eth to see if they were 
all there. 

'*You got what was coming to you," I told 
him. ^^ Anybody who'll steal fags should get 
worse than that." 

He squinted his eyes and looked me up and 
down. 

^^I'd hand yer one, ye little devil," he 
growled, ^^if it wasn't for the big friends you've 
got about yer. But wait a while. There's 
some here that's got something comin' to 'em 
from me and they'll get it some day." 

^*Some night yer mean," said Bonesey. 



122 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

^'Some time in the dark and be'ind their backs. 
I knows the kind of muck you come from. I 
may not be much to brag of meself, but if I 
wasn't a few shades better than you I'd put a 
bullet through me 'ead." 

Spike slunk away, but we knew there was 
murder in his heart. 

^'There's three of lis 'e's got marked for fu- 
ture reference," said Bonesey. *^I'm one, 
you're another. Big Tom's a third. Watch out, 
lad." 

Spike kept away from us as much as he could 
after that. He was a lonely beggar, with 
scarcely a word for anybody, but the surly look 
in his eyes told us fairly well what he was think- 
ing about. 

It happened a little later that he and Big 
Tom were on night guard at the same time. 
Our line never ran straight but was all curls 
and angles, and between their two posts the 
trench bent backward like a letter V. Tom was 
on one side of the V and Spike on the other, 
and they were not more than fifty yards apart. 
The night was so black that they couldn't see 
each other, but each knew exactly where the 
other was. 



THE LOW-DOWN CUR 123 

Before long a bullet came sputtering into the 
sand bags at the spot where Big Tom stood. A 
few minutes later another struck in the same 
place, and Tom began to think it queer that 
the two had found the same mark on a quiet 
night when the Huns were doing so little shoot- 
ing. 

He took a peek over the top and at the same 
moment an exploding shell sent a dazzling light 
over the trench. Just as the shell exploded 
something struck his helmet, and he fell over to 
the bottom. He picked himself up unhurt, but 
the top of his helmet had a hole in it. It was 
not such a hole as a bit of a shell would have 
made but had been drilled by a bullet. 

Big Tom knew who had sent that bullet, but he 
said nothing about it till the next evening, when 
I heard him telling the story. 

**Full well I knew he was going to do some- 
thing of the kind sooner or later, ^' he was say- 
ing, *'but my mind was running on other things 
than him last night, and I didn't expect it. 
Then those two bullets came plunk into the sand 
bags and set me wondering. When the shell 
exploded my face was toward the spot where 
that blighter was posted, and for half a second 



124 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

I saw him plainer than if the sun had been up. 
He was just going to shoot, and, so help me ! his 
gun was pointing straight at me. Don't tell 
me it wasn't his bullet that got me. I know 
better.'' 

So, as if the danger from the Huns wasn't 
bad enough, it was plain murder we must guard 
against. We were not afraid of the Boches any 
longer because we had been fighting them so 
long, but we were afraid of Spike. He was as 
sly and tricky as any German, and he had a 
better chance at us than they had. They would 
have to fight hard to get at us and risk their 
lives doing so, but Spike could strike from be- 
hind us or shoot close by from the dark with 
small danger to himself. 

**I'm thinkin' some of us would better 'ave a 
little talk with that gay lad and put some fear 
into 'is black 'eart," Bonesey suggested. 

But Big Tom shook his head. 

'' 'Twould do little good," he said. ''He's 
an old timer at dirty tricks, and there's no 
scarin' him. We got to be careful, that's all. 
He may get one of us and he may not. If he 's 
a bullet in his belt that's got my number or 
yours you or me will get it sooner or later." 



THE LOW-DOWN CUR 125 

From that night on I kept the tail of my eye 
on Spike, and whenever I knew he was near me 
in the dark my nerves would start ajumping. 



CHAPTER XVII 

BONESEY BECOMES A HEEO 

VERY soon we had other troubles to worry 
over, and for the time we forgot about 
Spike. The German artillery opened up on us, 
and while the shelling lasted our trench was 
dreadfully unhealthy. In all the time we had 
been at the front we never had had such a dose 
from the big guns as we got then. 

*^Lie down and duck your heads when you 
hear a shell coming,'' an officer sung out to us 
just after the first one had struck close by. 

The next minute we heard another one on the 
way, and we all went down on our knees or our 
stomachs. We put our hands over our eyes so 
that we should not be blinded if flying splinters 
came our way, and waited for the explosion. 
The thing burst a few yards off and spattered 
us with dirt. 

Then a shrapnel shell burst just over us, so 
close that I felt the heat of it. I thought I was 
done for that time, and it surprised me when 

126 



BONESEY BECOMES A HERO 127 

I couldn't feel any pain. I twitched my arms 
and legs to mal^e sure there was nothing wrong 
with them, and they moved easily enough, but 
I couldn't understand why none of that shrap- 
nel had hit me when it was flying all around 
me as thick as flies. At least one poor chap 
hadn't been so lucky, for I heard a cry for 
stretcher-bearers. 

*^ Blimey! That was a bad one!" said the 
lad next to me. *^Must have copped more than 
one of us. We'll all go west if many more like 
that come this way. ' ' 

^'Spud's down," somebody called. 

**Aye! And three more. Hope there's no 
more shrapnel comin'." 

A wounded man was groaning dreadfully 
somewhere near. Then another shell came and 
sent the dirt flying over us again. Every min- 
ute one flew over us, sometimes sending splint- 
ers into the trench, and most of the time we were 
on our knees or our stomachs with our hands 
over our eyes. 

I thought that shelling would never stop. 
There's nothing worse than heavy shell fire, 
the awful noise of it, the flying splinters and the 
thinking that every minute that passes may be 



128 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

your last. Give me bullets, give me rain and 
mud, give me rats and cooties, anything but 
shell fire. I'd have gone through No Man's 
Land twice over if I had had my choice, rather 
than spend five minutes in a trench where the 
shells were flying. The waiting for each shell 
to burst and the shock from the crash of them 
gets on a lad's nerves till he shakes all over. 

For two hours the shelling lasted, and then of 
a sudden stopped. We got up and stretched 
ourselves, and we all looked as if we hadn 't slept 
for a week— all of us that were left, for the 
stretcher-bearers had been busy and there was 
many a face I missed. For a long time my head 
buzzed from the noise of the shells and every 
nerve in my body was on the jump. 

A little later a sentry caught sight of a 
wounded man out in front. We thought he 
must be one of a small raiding party that had 
gone out the night before. Almost every one 
of us took chances with bullets to take a look at 
him from over the top. Every little while he 
would wave his hand to call our attention to 
him, even though it brought the danger of 
being seen by the Boches, who would have fired 
on him if they had known he was alive. 



BONESEY BECOMES A HERO 129 

It was dreadful to see him lying suffering out 
there, probably with no water left in his bottle, 
while we knew we could do nothing to help 
him. It was hot, hot as blazes, and he was ly- 
ing with his face to the glaring sun. And we 
could only watch him suffer! 

^^ Blimey! I can^t stand lookin' at him any 
more,'' said Tom, who had a soft heart in his 
big body. *^If it wasn't that I have a wife 
and children at home I'd go out after him. I 
would that." 

**'Twould be no more than foolishness," the 
Sergeant told him. ^^You wouldn't live to get 
half way. "What's the sense in committing sui- 
cide?" 

* ^ There 'd be just a chance if 'twas dark, ' ' said 
Bonesey, *^and it will be that when night falls, 
for the moon don't get up till late." 

^^ There might be," the Sergeant said; ^^and 
again there might not. The Bodies were never 
so wide awake as these last few days." 

*^Who is the poor bloke lying out there?" 
somebody asked. *' Anybody know?" 

The Sergeant shook his head. 

**Five men were missing from that last pa- 
trol party when it got back. He may be any 



130 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

one of those five. Or he may have been out 
there for days. Perhaps he's been lying in a 
shell hole, where we couldn't see him, and has 
managed to crawl out of it. Anyway, he's one 
of our own men. I got a good look at him and 
I know that." 

*^The Germans will get sight of him soon if 
he keeps on signalling," said Billy. **It's a 
pity we can't let him know we've seen him so 
he'll lie quiet." 

After a time Bonesey stepped up to me look- 
ing solemn as an owl. 

^ * Mascot, ' ' he said, * ^ I 'm thinkin ' some one of 
us blokes should go out and bring that Jad in, 
whoever he may be." 

**I'm too small," I said. ^^I couldn't carry 
him." 

*' 'Ow about me?" said Bonesey. **I've no 
woman nor kids. 'Twould be better to get shot 
out there than while sneakin' through some rich 
bloke's 'ouse back 'ome. 'Twould sort of im- 
prove me reputation with Scotland Yard, I'm 
thinkin'." 

All the rest of the day I couldn't get the 
wounded man out of my mind. Every lad in 
the trench looked serious; there was never a 



BONESEY BECOMES A HERO 131 

smile nor a laugh, for how could we be cheerful 
while that poor suffering chap lay out there just 
beyond us signalling for help and not getting 
it? It was the first day that passed without a 
song, and even Billy, who was the finest singer 
in the lot and one of the j oiliest, never raised 
his voice. 

A little after dark Bonesey said to the Ser- 
geant : 

**I'm goin' over the top to bring 'im in. The 
Boches won't see me now.'' 

The Sergeant nodded, and Bonesey went up 
the ladder. 

* * Hug the ground, ' ' the Sergeant called after 
him. ^ * Don 't lift your head, or they '11 get you 
sure. And don't forget to lie still whenever 
they send up a light." 

I wished the night had been darker, for 
though the moon wasn't up the stars were shin- 
ing in a clear sky and we could see all the way 
across to the German line. Yet it might have 
been worse, for there was hardly any rifle firing 
at the time and the heavies and the typewriters 
were as quiet as a church. 

I climbed up and watched Bonesey on his way. 
He was too wise a lad to take foolish chances 



132 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

and was moving along almost flat to the ground 
and as slow as a turtle. He was well beyond 
the wires when a star-shell went up and sent 
a glare over him. I could feel my heart jump. 
But he lay as still as a dead man while the 
light lasted, and no shot came his way. A mo- 
ment later he went out of sight in some dip in 
the ground or a shell hole, and I didn't see him 
again for a long time. Then I heard somebody 
cry: 

^^ There he is! Strike me pink! He's got 
him! He's got him!" 

And, so help me! he had got him. He was 
crawling with the wounded lad on his back. 
It was slow work over that rough ground, Avith 
a shell hole in the way every few feet, and I 
couldn't see how the Germans could help seeing 
him, but there was no sign that they did. I 
could hardly breathe as I waited for the next 
light to go up. They would surely see him 
then, I thought. 

He was half way back when the light broke. 
He stopped and lay low, but the wounded man 
on top of him was a mark the Bodies couldn't 
fail to see. Bullets began to fly, and the lights 
went up one after another in quick succession. 



BONESEY BECOMES A HERO 133 

Bonesey and his man got into a shell hole, and 
lay there for a good half hour. Then they came 
in sight, not twenty yards away. The Germans 
saw them, and began firing again. When close 
to our line Bonesey stopped crawling, got to 
his feet and broke into a run. It takes a strong 
man to do that with such a weight on his back. 
He got to our parapet, and two men climbed up 
to help him down. 

Bonesey hadn't so much as a scratch, but the 
man he had brought in lay still and his eyes were 
closed. 

** A bullet got 'im as I was crawlin' with 'im,' ' 
Bonesey said. ^^I fear 'e's done for.'' 

The Sergeant knelt over the poor chap and 
found the bullet hole in the back of his head. 
He was stone dead. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

« 

THE MAN FKOM AMEEICA 

DON'T let me forget tlie man from America, 
for I have been so busy telling abont the 
fighting that I haven't mentioned that chummy 
lad who, when we were feeling blue and home- 
sick and things were at their worst, made us 
forget the shells, the rats, the mud and all our 
troubles as he told us of his adventures in 
strange lands. 

His name was McBride. A tall, skinny chap 
he was, with a twinkle in his eyes and a good 
word for everybody. He was one of the new 
men in our company, and from that trench he 
was getting his first look at the war. 

Many a queer story McBride told us of dig- 
ging gold in the Klondike, of hunting bears in 
the Rocky Mountains, of cowboy life on the 
plains, for he had been everywhere in America 
where there was adventure to be found. 

^*Now let me ask yer, did yer ever see any 
Indians'?" Piccadilly said to him one day. 

134 



THE MAN FROM AMERICA 135 

**Sure," McBride answered. ^^Lots of ^em. 
I've fought against 'em when they were try- 
ing to raid New York City. We drove 'em v 
'back into Jersey, where they got away in the 
woods." 

^^What yer givin' us!" growled Piccadilly, 
his little eyes getting red, as they always did 
when he was angry. ^^Do yer think I know 
no more of America than to swallow one like 
that I There's no Indians within two hundred 
miles of New York." 

^ ^You're right," spoke up McBride, without 
so much as blinking. ^^Did I say New York? 
It was a slip of the tongue. It was Buffalo I 
meant. ' ' 

*^ That's more like it," said Piccadilly. 

^'They came again a few days later," Mc- 
Bride went on, *^and did a war dance around 
the edge of the town. Then they raided us, 
waving their tomahawks and yelling fit to 
freeze your blood. They captured the mayor, 
tied him to a stake, stuck pine needles into his 
skin and set fire to them. Then they scalped 
him. We rescued him just in time, but he 's had 
to wear a toupee ever since." 

'* You should have fighting enough over there, 



136 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

without comin^ to this bloomin' place, '^ Picca- 
dilly said, as he puffed his cigarette. 

^^I wanted a change,'' McBride explained. 
**And I thought I'd like to see England and 
take a squint at the King." 

^^It's easy seein' 'im," Bonesey put in. 
**I've met 'im 'undreds of times as he strolled 
along the street with a gold crown on 'is 'ead, 
an ermine robe flappin' round 'im and a big 
cigar between 'is teeth." 

Of course old Bonesey was spoofing the Yan- 
kee lad — ^^ stringing" or ^^ joshing" as they say 
in America. 

^' We've kings of our own," McBride said. 
*'Oil kings, steel kings, soap kings, all kinds of 
kings. Whenever one of 'em wants to build a 
new palace he levies an extra tax on his sub- 
jects, and without the trouble of asking his 
parliament about it, either. Any one of 'em is 
so rich he could buy all of King George 's crown 
jewels and give 'em to the kids for playthings." 

This McBride was much given to boasting, 
though not so much about himself as of his coun- 
try. He thought the war would be over very 
soon now that the Yankees were coming in. 

**We used to think that if we sent the Giants 



THE MAN FROM AMERICA 137 

or the Red Sox over here we could clean up 
most of Europe without much trouble," he said, 
'^but it looks now as if we'd have to send a few 
of our regiments. When they get here we'll 
lead you straight through to Berlin without 
stopping, and we'll have the Kaiser singing 
*The Star Spangled Banner' and wishing he'd 
never sunk the Lusitania. We 're going to take 
him back with us and put him in the Central 
Park Zoo." 

But even with all his boasting we all lilced 
him well, and there was never a time when he 
wasn't glad to cheer us up a bit with his tales of 
the wild places he had lived in. Listening to 
him brought back my old longing to take to 
the sea and visit such places as he had seen. 
He had even been in the West Indies and the 
ports of the old-time buccaneers, and like as 
not had seen the very island that Jim Hawkins 
told about. 

^'There's many an island I've been to down 
in those seas," he told me, ^Hhat was once the 
hiding place of pirate gold. And there 's plenty 
of the gold buried on some of 'em to this day. 
Men still go digging for it, though it's only 
once in a half -century or so that they find any 



138 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

worth mentioning. But it's the Klondike you 
should go to, son, if it's adventure you're look- 
ing for. If your luck's with you you'll find 
gold; if not you may starve or freeze to death 
hunting for it. No need of going to war for 
excitement when there are such places as that 
scattered over the map. But you want to take 
a wad of money with you, for prices are way 
up. I've been in Dawson when eggs were five 
dollars apiece, and if you took a girl into a 
restaurant and bought her a couple of 'em 
fried she 'd be yours for life. There was a one- 
eyed, ugly-looking guy there who stole the 
belle of the town away from as handsome a 
feller as you ever set eyes on and who couldn't 
understand how it had been done till he found 
the one-eyed guy had been buying her fried 
eggs." 

He told us of his life in the high mountains, 
of the bears he tracked through the forests, of 
the mountain lions that came prowling down to 
his damp after dark and howled all night, and 
there wasn't a man among us who didn't wish 
he was out of the blooming war and in some such 
place as that. 

^* That's the life son," he would say. **It 



THE MAN FROM AMERICA 139 

beats the trenches; and, believe me, I^m going 
back to it as soon as this fuss is over/^ 

The bullets would be flying over us and the 
big guns roaring as he told his stories, but I 
didn't seem to hear them at all. I was way 
over there in America, in the places he was tell- 
ing about, digging gold and hunting bears. 



CHAPTER XIX 

ON THE MAECH 

GOOD news came at last. We were going to 
leave Ypres. Where they were going to 
send us we didn't know, but somewhere south. 
But, wherever it was, we learned there would be 
days of marching, instead of being cooped up 
like rats in the dirty trenches. 

We didn't shed any tears over leaving that 
old hole in the ground, but we were sorry for 
the poor chaps who relieved us, for we knew 
what we had been through and what they would 
have to put up with after us. 

On a line starlit night we filed out to the rear 
with our big packs on our shoulders, and struck 
into the road. There were thousands of other 
men on that road, all coming up to the Ypres 
front, and we cheered them as they marched by, 
regiment after regiment. The^^ were all sing- 
ing, and we gave them song for song. I won- 
dered where they had come from and what 
fights they had been in, for they were no new 

140 



ON THE MARCH , 141 

soldiers just over, but old veterans, who had 
been in many a battle. A jolly crowd they were. 
Little they cared what trouble might be wait- 
ing for them ahead. They had been through so 
much that nothing more could worry them. 

Sometimes the road was so crowded that 
we had to pass in single file, exchanging jokes 
with the lads who were passing us and telling 
them what nice trenches we had left for them 
at Ypres. Sometimes all of us, those coming 
and going, would have to get out of the way 
for the ammunition wagons that came banging 
and rattling along with mules and horses at a 
gallop. Sometimes at a big bend in the road 
we could see the lighted ends of the soldiers' 
cigarettes trailing along for a mile or more, like 
a file of fireflies. 

Till long after midnight we marched, halting 
now and then to rest beside the road, and at 
last we turned in for some sleep in an open 
field just outside a little village. 

Oh, it felt good to be out in the open country 
again, away from the shells and the bullets, and 
to lie out in the green grass and the flowers and 
listen to the frogs singing, in the marshes. I 
was tired from the march, but I lay awake for 



142 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

an hour listening to those croaking frogs and 
looking over to the little village that was such a 
pretty sight against the sky. 

When the sun came up the birds were singing 
all around us, and I felt as fresh as a daisy. We 
fell in after breakfast and took the road that 
led through the village. Our band was play- 
ing, and we were all singing as we trailed along 
behind it, for it was singing that made the 
marching easy and kept our spirits up. When 
we got to the cobble- stoned village streets the 
band began to play ^'Columbia the Gem of the 
Ocean, ' ' and you should have heard the women 
and children cheer the tune and clap their hands 
as we went swinging by. 

' ' That 's the stuff ! ' ' McBride cried. ' ' That 's 
the best tune IVe heard since I've been at the 
front. I 'm fed up with ^ God Save the King M ' ' 

A few moments later the band gave us ^^The 
Star Spangled Banner, ' ' and that American be- 
gan to yell like a savage. 

**Sing it, fellers! Give us the grand old 
song!'' he cried. 

And sing it we did — those of us that knew 
the words. The regiments that passed us on 
their way to Ypres took it up from us, and in 



ON THE MARCH 143 

a few minutes there were miles of Britishers 
singing the American song. 

We passed through so many villages that day 
that I lost count of them, and in each one the 
women and children and old men came out to 
welcome us. "We were near the edge of France, 
and often they were singing ^' The Marseillaise" 
as we passed. 

About dark we halted for the night at a place 
that had been fairly well banged to pieces by 
the Boches. Half the cottages were without 
roofs, and the little church had lost its tower. 
But the Boches had been gone for many months, 
and the village was as peaceful as a graveyard 
now. 

**I want a bath,'^ said Billy, ^^and I know 
where I'm going to get it. There's a brook not 
far from here. Come on, Mascot. ' ' 

**I'm thinkin' you should 'ave been born a 
duck or a fish,'' grumbled Bonesey. *^I never 
knew such a bloke for wantin' to dabble in the 
water. You'll wash the 'ide off of yer some 
day. It ain't 'ealthy, so much bathin'." * 

So Bonesey left us and went hunting for a 
place where he could buy some beer, and Billy 
and I went off through the fields toward the 



144 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

brook. We found it in a little wood — as fine a 
brook as I ever saw, with clear, cool water, and 
shiny pebbles underneath. We stripped and 
splashed into it in a hurry, and oh, how good it 
felt ! The dirt was caked into us and we didn 't 
have any soap, but we lay on the pebbly bottom 
and soaked till we got half-way clean. When 
we came out we found a patch of soft moss and 
we lay there till we were dry, for the evening 
was warm. 

Then we strolled back to the village, where 
we found a woman who could speak a little 
English and who told us how she and her chil- 
dren had lived in her cellar for two days while 
the Germans were shelling the place. She had 
heard from the soldiers that had passed through 
on their way toward Ypres that there was big 
fighting going on to the south of us and that 
the Germans were getting the worst of it. 

*^ That's what they're sending us into," said 
Billy. ^^ There's lively times ahead, lad." 

The villagers took as many of our men into 
their houses as they had room for, but Billy, 
Bonesey and I slept in the open again and we 
were glad to be out there rather than under a 
roof, since the night was clear and dry. But 



ON THE MAECH 145 

luck turned against us, for along toward morn- 
ing it began to rain. When day broke it was 
coming down in sheets, and the cheer had all 
gone out of us. We fell into line for the march 
sopping wet, and the whole company was 
grumbling and swearing, for they couldn't even 
smoke, the rain was so heavy. 

Eegiments were still going past us, and they 
were a dreary-looking crowd in the storm. 
Never a song was heard, and even the bands had 
stopped playing. Now and then some of the 
lads passing by would call out something about 
hot times to the south, so we knew the woman 
in the village had told us the truth and that we 
were in for it. But there wasn't a sign of 
trouble so far, and the woods and fields were as 
quiet as if the war were a hundred miles away. 

All day we marched, stopping every two or 
three hours for rest, and the rain never stopped. 
The wind was blowing in our faces, and the 
storm half blinded us. The water made our 
packs and our clothes as heavy as lead and 
squirted from our shoes with every step. 

^*This bloomin' battalion's got a curse on it," 
grumbled Bonesey.- ^^Notliin' but trouble for 
us poor blokes wherever we goes." 



CHAPTER XX 

SIITKING IN THE BOG 

THAT night we spent in the sopping fields 
beside the road. All night the rain came 
down, with never a let-up, and when morning 
broke it was still with us. All day we marched 
through it, silent and glum, and whenever a 
voice was raised it was only to grumble and 
growl and curse. 

**I 'opes yer gettin' washin' enough to sat- 
isfy yer for the time,'' Bonesey called to Billy. 
*^Yer won't be cryin' for a bath again just yet 
I'm thinkin'." 

Billy was too much fed up with trouble to 
answer. Never had I known a time when there 
were fewer words passed along the line ; and so 
it was all day — not a joke nor a song. 

Then another night in the wet. Yet we slept 
like the dead, for we were nigh to being done 
for from the weight of our packs and the beat- 
ing of the wind and rain against us. When the 

146 



SINKING IN THE BOG 147 

bugles called us up in the cold, gray dawn the 
rain was coming down as hard as ever. 

^ ^ If only I 'ad a dry fag now I could bear up 
and be a bit cheery,'' Bonesey grumbled, ^^but 
me smokes are soaked through and spoiled, 
hevery one of 'em. Any bloke got a dry fag 
about 'im!" 

" 'Ear 'im! 'As any bloke got a dry fag!" 
came from somewhere in the line. ^'Wot does 
'e think it's been doin' these last days and 
nights! 'E must 'ave dreamt the sun was 
shinin '. There 's not a dry fag in the bloomin ' 
army." 

And the lad was right; there wasn't a dry 
thing of any kind in the blooming army, not 
even our skins, for we were as well soaked as if 
we had dropped into a pond with our clothes on. 

Along toward the end of the day there came 
a grumbling and a roaring from the south. 

*^ There's thunder," said Piccadilly. ^^That 
don't sound much like it was goin' to clear." 

*^ Thunder me eye!" growled the Sergeant. 
^^It'sguns." 

The noise grew louder as we marched on, and 
it was as the Sergeant had told us; it was the 
guns. We were getting near the fighting, 



148 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

though it was little we felt like going into more 
trouble than we had already. The fighting 
blood was all soaked out of us. For once I 
hated to think of* going into battle. I wanted 
to see the sun shine and to be out lying in the 
grass in the dry, open fields again, with every- 
thing quiet and peaceful, and the birds sing- 
ing. 

Maybe our officers knew what was ahead of 
us in the way of fighting and knew just where 
we were going to, but they never let us poor 
Tommies know about such things. It was just 
follow orders with us, and ask no questions. It 
was just work and march and fight with us and 
bear our troubles as well as we might, while the 
officers did the thinking and got whatever in- 
formation there was and kept their mouths shut 
about it. But we couldn't help wondering 
where the battle was, and how it was going, 
and whether the Boches were getting beaten or 
our line was breaking. And the only answer 
we got to all the questions we asked ourselves 
was the roaring of those guns. 

** They 're speakin' to us," said Bonesey. 
** They 're sayin', * 'Urry up! 'Urry up! 



SINKING IN THE BOG 149 

'Urry up and get into the fight!' And that's 
the only word that ever comes for us poor tired 
beggars." 

We got into the edge of the fuss the next day, 
when shrapnel began to crack over our heads. 
A shell exploded in a cottage a few hundred 
yards away, and up shot a mass of black smoke 
and flying dust and bricks. When the smoke 
cleared away the cottage was gone. There 
wasn't even a scrap of a wall left. 

The Boches had the range of our road, so 
we turned off from it to get away from their 
fire, and struck through the fields. Sometimes 
we were pushing through the long, wet grass, 
but often we were wallowing in ploughed 
ground, where the mud was over our ankles and 
the going was hard enough to take the heart 
out of the strongest of us. 

At last we came back to the road, and soon we 
began to see the signs of the fighting. Artil- 
lery limbers were rolling along the cross-roads 
through the driving rain with ammunition, 
and galloping horses were dragging empty lim- 
bers back for more. Bed Cross motors came 
in sight, moving carefully along full of wounded 



150 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

men. Then a group of the wounded came walk- 
ing by, and, for all their hurts and their drip- 
ping clothes, their spirits were still high, for 
they were laughing and joking. One was limp- 
ing along between tw'o comrades who had band- 
ages round their heads, and another, just able 
to hobble, passed by all alone looking white 
and sick. 

It grew dark, yet we were still on the march. 
And the rain was still coming down, with the 
wind whistling through it. The night grew 
inky black, and I could scarcely see the lad who 
marched shoulder to shoulder beside me. 
What a night that was ! But the swish of the 
water and the roar of the wind were as nothing 
fo the noise of the big guns. There were shells 
flying overhead, and, as they broke, they sent 
a glare far up into the sky across the sheets of 
rain, so that the big drops looked miles long. 

"We left the road again, and there's no tell- 
ing how our officers managed to find our way in 
all that blackness. Maybe they didn't find it. 
They may have taken the wrong course for all 
I know. But I know that, whether it was the 
right way or the wrong one, it was a dreadful 
course to follow. Over sticky furrows we 



SINKING IN THE BOG 151 

stumbled and fell, we slipped in wet grass, we 
bumped into trees, and we went splashing into 
pools of water to our waists. * 

Then a shell struck among us, and there came 
cries and groans from wounded men and shouts 
from the officers. But we could see not a thing 
of what was going on. Not even the ground at 
our feet could we see. Dark nights I have 
known at the front, and many of them, but never 
one so black as that. Even the light of the 
lanterns spread only a few feet through the 
storm. 

A squad of about twenty of us got separated 
from the column when the shell exploded. A 
moment later the man who carried our lantern 
fell into a hole of water, and the light went out 
for good. We groped about, trying to find our 
way back to the rest of the company. After a 
while we stood still and listened. Wherever 
the column was, we couldn 't hear them, nor any 
other sound but the storm and the guns. 

Then we went into the mud — ^worse mud than 
any we had pulled through since the rain began. 
One moment we were sinking into it half way 
to our knees and it was as much as we could 
(io to pull ourselves free; the next we were 



152 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

splashing in pools of water, while the mud at the 
bottom gripped our feet. 

We floundered along, not knowing which way 
to turn, and the bog grew worse and worse. 
Once I went into the mire to my knees and 
thought I was lost, for it took the last bit of 
strength that was left me to get out. 

There came a cry for help. 

^ ^ I 'm sinking ! I 'm sinking ! ' ' the voice cried. 
* ' The mud's sucking me down ! ' ' 

And then : 

*^We can't help him. We're sinking our- 
selves." 

I felt the mud pulling me down, too. Not 
another step could I take. All the time I was 
struggling to get loose the voice of the fright- 
ened lad, whoever he was, was crying for help 
over and over again. 

Then came a flash of light. It may have been 
lightning, or it may have been a bursting shell 
or a mine or a rocket. I was too busy trying to 
save myself to know what it came from. All I 
knew was that it lit up the whole bog with a 
dazzling glare and that close in front of us a 
lad had sunk into the mud to his shoulders and 
was slowly going out of sight. 



SINKING IN THE BOG 153 

For half a second we saw him. His face 
showed white as chalk, and his arms were reach- 
ing out to us. Then the light went out. 

For a few moments he kept calling to us. 
Then we heard him no more. Another light 
flashed, and in the spot where he had been there 
was nothing but black mud. I began to shiver 
and shake as the mud drew me down. It took 
the heart out of me, that sight. 

I cried out, for I thought the bog had got me 
for good and all. An arm reached out from 
behind and grabbed me, and with that help I 
pulled myself free. The next step brought me 
to firmer ground. 

* ^ We '11 all be done for if we don 't get out of 
here soon,'' said the lad who had helped me. 
*^I was almost gone myself a minute ago, and 
I'm that twisted I don't know which way to 
turn. ' ' 

Close together we moved carefully along, and 
soon we found easier going. Before long we 
heard some one calling out, ^^This way, boys," 
and we followed the voice. After a few min- 
utes we had reached grass-covered fields, and, 
as a light flashed, we saw the road not a hundred 
yards ahead. 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE BATTLE OF ELANDEES 

AS we were drawing away from the bog a 
man edged up to me out of somewhere in 
the blackness and kept by my side. I spoke, 
but he said not a word. After a time, in one of 
those flashes of light, I looked square into his 
face. The sight of it turned me cold, for it 
was Spike who was beside me. 

I jumped away from liim, and I am not sure 
that I didn't cry out, for my nerves had gone 
to pieces in the struggle in the mud. Even back 
in that bog I should rather have been, taking 
chances with being swallowed by it, than out 
there in the open alone on such a night with that 
blighter sneaking along beside me in the pitchy 
dark. He could knife me or shoot me, and no- 
body would ever be the wiser. 

I made off from him as fast as I could, but 
it seemed to me that all the time he was keep- 
ing behind me. It may have been my shaky 
nerves that made me think so, for when I got 

154 



THE BATTLE OF FLANDERS 155 

to the road, where the lights of marching regi- 
ments were flickering along the way, I was 
alone. 

As I sat resting by the roadside and trying to 
scrape some of the thick cakes of mud from my 
clothes and shoes a few lads came straggling out 
of the fields and joined me. They were part 
of our company and had been with me in the 
bog. As shaky as I they were, and we were all 
so tired out from what we had been through 
that as we started off to try to find our place 
in the column we slunk along as if our feet had 
been weighted with lead. 

**I'd give all my back pay for a fag,'' said 
one of them, some lad I must have known, 
though I couldn't recognize him in the dark. 
^^My nerves are jumping something awful. 
And not a smoke among us ! I lost my gun, and 
nigh to lost my life along with it in that mud- 
hole. Blimey! I wish this bloomin' night was 
over. ' ' 

As fast as we could we marched along the 
road, and not very far ahead we came up with 
our battalion. The lads in our company didn't 
even know we had been gone; they didn't know 
anything but that the rain was soaking through 



156 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

them and that their packs were growing heavier 
with every step. 

Before long we turned off the road again, and 
we found a little farther on that they were send- 
ing us into the trenches. They were more like 
brooks than trenches. We waded through 
them with the water up to our knees. Half 
dead we were for want of sleep, but it was little 
rest we got that night in all the wet. 

It was there that we learned that our army 
had been driving the Huns back for almost 
a week, and that there was big fighting going 
on over more than twenty miles of line. We 
were on the edge of the great Battle of Flanders, 
and Fritzie was getting his worst beating since 
the Marne. 

In the morning the storm let up, but it was a 
dark, foggy day and our clothes were still sop- 
ping wet. I could think of nothing but that I 
wanted to go to sleep, and every time I sat down 
my head began to nod. But there was no time 
to doze. They were going to send us into the 
fight, and we had to clean our guns and make 
ready. 

Before long our artillery got to work, and 
made a terrible din. It was the biggest bom- 



THE BATTLE OF FLANDERS 157 

bardment I had ever heard, and our officers told 
us that we were giving the Germans twice as 
many shells as they were sending back. We 
knew well what all the big gunfire meant. They 
were getting the German trenches into shape for 
us to break through. They were going to wipe 
those trenches out if they could, so we could 
meet Fritzie in the open. 

In the afternoon, soaked and tired though we 
were, we went over the top and at them. It was 
mud, mud, mud everywhere, and it was all we 
could do to get through it. We slipped, and fell, 
and wallowed a bit and were up again, and the 
mud was caked over us from head to toes as we 
drove forward through the bullets and shells. 

Ahead of us in the mist I saw a gray line of 
men crouching out in the open with their bayo- 
nets ready for us. We went into them full tilt, 
and we found that they were lined up in front 
of trenches that had been shot to pieces and 
almost levelled by the big shells. 

A Hun rose up out of a hole in front of me, 
and the mud and water was dripping from him 
as he jabbed at me with his bayonet. I caught 
his gun against mine and turned it. And then 
I got him in the stomach. He dropped back 



158 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

into Ms hole, and I heard the mud splash as he 
fell. 

Near by some Boches were jumping into a 
dug-out through a door in the top. We went 
for them, and the door closed with a bang. We 
tried to break through, but the door was made of 
steel and was fastened tight. The whole dug- 
out was steel and concrete and had held fast 
tlirough all the shell-fire that had wiped out the 
trench. If we had pried away at it all night 
we wouldn't have made a dent. 

A group of bombers came up and crouched 
down beside the door to wait for it to open. 

^^Pritzie'll 'ave to open up some time," said a 
fat Tommy who held a bomb in his fist, '^and 
w'en 'e does we'll drop a few of these into 
'im." 

The Huns' line went all to pieces as we drove 
into it, and in not much more than a minute 
there were hundreds of Boches with their hands 
in the air singing, * ^ Kamerad ! ' ' 

We went on to attack the second line, and 
there, too, we found the trenches almost wiped 
out and the Huns waiting for us in front of 
them. They had had such an awful dose of 
shell-fire that they didn 't put up much of a fight, 



THE BATTLE OF FLANDERS 159 

and the cold steel we gave them did the trick in 
no time. 

I came back with three prisoners who had 
been turned over to me to take to the rear. As 
we passed the concrete dug-out the bombers 
were still crouching over the steel door waiting. 
They were like cats watching a mouse-hole. 

^^I'm tellin' yer it's only a question of time/* 
said the fat Tommy. ^^Then they opens the 
door and we drops the bombs. ' ' 

One of my prisoners was an officer, and he 
was showing signs of getting balky. I tickled 
him with the point of my bayonet, and he gave 
a yell and went ahead without any more trouble. 
I drove the three of them along in front of me 
through the mud, letting them know the bay- 
onet wasn't keeping very far away from their 
skins, and it was as easy as driving horses. 
But I was a bit worried when I saw the fog 
creeping in around us again, thinking that if it 
got thick they might try to break away. 

They must have been thinking the same 
thing, for, when the fog did thicken up a bit, one 
of them jumped into it and ran. I fired at him, 
and I must have hit him somewhere, for I heard 
him yell, but he kept on running. I couldn 't go 



160 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

after him with the other two on my hands, and 
before I could shoot again he was hidden in the 
fog. But I was thankful he wasn't the officer. 

The fighting was still going on all along the 
line, but I didn't have any more of it that day. 
After I delivered my prisoners I found a fairly 
dry spot in our trench with nobody near, and I 
curled up in it for a bit of rest. I was so fagged 
I couldn't have kept going five minutes more, 
and I had no more than touched the ground 
when I dropped asleep. 

A sergeant woke me up with a crack from the 
butt of his gun on the soles of my feet. I must 
have been sleeping there more than an hour, so 
some of the lads told me. It did me good. I 
felt fresh again and like going out and doing 
some more fighting. 

When night came the big guns were still go- 
ing, and we heard that some of our infantry 
was attacking in the dark not far away. 

Next morning we went to work digging 
trenches where the shells had levelled those of 
the Huns and filling sand bags for the parapets. 
As it grew dark we were hui?ried up to the new 
front and into a trench we had taken from the 
Germans but which had been left in fairly good 



THE BATTLE OF FLANDERS 161 

shape. The Boches were getting ready to at- 
tack, and we had small chance of sleep. 

About two hours after dark their artillery 
opened up strong, and a little later they came 
at us. 

We climbed up and met them in front of the 
sand bags. We put the bayonets to them, and 
the punishment they got from us was more than 
they could stand. Little by little we pushed 
them back, and when their line broke we chased 
them through the mud, stumbling over the dead 
and wounded. 

It was then that I saw Spike going forward a 
few feet away from me, and I kept the tail of 
an eye on him, knowing well that he hadn 't for- 
gotten his grudge and that he was still waiting 
for a chance to get even. A little later I caught 
sight of Bonesey. Spike was just behind him, 
keeping the same distance as they went forward, 
and I knew it was no German he was after. He 
was tracking Bonesey and waiting for his 
chance, for he never l^t him get out of his sight. 
I ran forward to give Bonesey a warning, but 
I hadn't reached him when Spike raised his 
gun and fired. Bonesey clapped a hand to his 
cheek, where the bullet had cut a gash through 



162 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

the skin, and at the same time a German in front 
of him fell forward dead. He had been killed 
by the same bullet. 

Bonesey wheeled around, with his gun raised 
ready to shoot, but Spike had made off into the 
dark, and we didn't see him again till the fight- 
ing was over. 

We might have complained to an officer of 
what he had done, but what would we gain by it ? 
Spike could say he had shot at the German, and 
we could never prove that he hadn 't. And yet 
we knew well that he would try the same trick 
again sooner or later. 

*'Some one of these nights, or some day in a 
fog, 'e'll get one of us,'' Bonesey said, ^^ unless 
we get 'im first. I'm go in' to shoot 'im in the 
next fight, Mascot, providin' the chance comes 
me way." 

But Spike's chance didn't come in Flanders, 
though we fought there for a full week longer, 
driving them back mile after mile, taking the 
heart out of them till they wanted to fight no 
more and wished they had never crossed the 
Ehine. 



CHAPTER XXII 

VICTIMS OF THE HUNS 

MANY a lad was missing from our com- 
pany when we went on the march again. 
Some were lying under the daisies in Flanders, 
some were among the wounded in the hospitals, 
and a few were in German prison camps, for the 
Huns, even though we had given them a hard 
beating, had managed to round up a few prison- 
ers now and then. 

We filed out one night from the trenches 
where the big battle had been fought, and took 
the road to the south. The dreadful rains were 
over, the stars were all out, and we were a jolly 
lot as we swung along, our packs on our backs, 
singing and joking into France. 

For the next few days we were on the go a 
good part of the time, headed we didn^t know 
where but into another battle as likely as not. 
We were going through a country the Germans 
had just left, and the marks of the brutes were 

163 



164 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

everywhere — houses blown to pieces, churches 
battered by shells, orchards chopped down, 
crops ruined. But the people were the saddest 
sight — the old men and women and children 
who had lost their homes. 

Toward the end of the first day we were 
marching along in the dust under a scorching 
hot sun, and our water bottles were empty. 
We had come a long way through the heat and 
our tongues were dry with thirst. "We came to 
a pool of water beside the road, and some of 
the soldiers ran up and drank from it, though 
the water was warm and muddy. More of us 
were about to try it, but the officers stopped us. 
They said the Germans had been there only a 
short time before, and that they might have put 
poison in the pool, that being a favourite trick 
of theirs. 

When the lads who had drunk the water heard 
that they began to worry. And they had rea- 
son to, for soon they all turned terribly sick and 
one dropped dead in the road. 

Our officers sent men back to warn the regi- 
ments that were following us, and it was well 
they did. When our men got to the pool the 
Bedfordshires had just come up to it and some 



* 



VICTIMS OF THE HUNS 165 

of them were on their knees beside it about to 
drink when they got the warning. 

When we turned into the fields beside the 
road that evening to spend the night I caught 
sight of the fat bomber who had been squatting 
over the steel door of the dug-out where the 
Germans were trapped in the battle of Flanders. 
He was lying on the grass now smoking a ciga- 
rette, and I went up to him and asked him what 
had happened to those Huns. 

**We waited a full hour for them/' he said, 
**and then they lifted the bloomin' door a bit 
and we dropped the presents we 'ad for them 
through the crack. There may be bits of Ger- 
mans lyin' round there yet. There was about 
thirty of 'em, I should judge, though some of 
'em were in so many pieces that me 'ead is ach- 
in' yet from the job of tryin' to count 'em." 

The bomber and I slept side by side that 
night, and before morning I was sorry I hadn't 
chosen some other spot, for he had a way of 
waking up from time to time and poking me 
with his foot to get me to listen to something 
he had done in the line of blowing Huns to 
pieces. I never took a fancy to those bombers. 
They were good lads- to keep away from, for 



166 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

there was never any telling whether they had 
the stuff hidden abont themselves somewhere, 
and it went off by accident sometimes. 

When we got to La Bassee the big church 
there was full of wounded soldiers. It was in 
that church that we saw something that turned 
me cold — the most dreadful sight of all the aw- 
ful things we had seen. One of the nurses in 
charge of the wounded was a sister of mercy 
who came forward to welcome us. An officer 
held out his hand to her, but she drew back from 
him and shook her head. Then she lifted her 
arms for him to see. Both hands had been cut 
off by the Huns. As I stared at her I thought 
of what the Fusilier had told us when we came 
to Ypres of what devils the German soldiers 
were, and I knew then that he had been right 
when he said it was doing the Lord's work to 
kill them. 

It was like a dreadful dream, that long march 
of ours from village to village, for every day, 
almost every hour, we came to some new sight 
that saddened us or sent our blood running cold. 
"We had thought in Flanders that we had seen 
all the terrible things that a man could ever 
lay eyes on, but what we saw as we went through 



VICTIMS OF THE HUNS 167 

France was worse than those battlefields full 
of dead men. I want to forget most of it. I 
don't want it to come back and haunt me. I 
don't want it to come to me in my dreams or 
when I am alone in the dark. 

One morning as we were resting beside the 
road a pretty girl not more than eighteen years 
old came running up to us and just as she 
reached us fell forward into the dust in a faint. 
Some cold water was thrown over her face, and 
before long her strength came back and she 
told her story. 

She and a young man had been taken prison- 
ers by the Germans, who had locked them up in 
a house, meaning to send them back behind their 
lines later. Some German soldiers were there 
with them, and a guard was pacing back and 
forth outside. The soldiers found wine in the 
cellar, and before long were very drunk. They 
began to threaten the two prisoners with their 
bayonets. After a time the soldiers fell asleep, 
and the girl and the young man crept to a win- 
dow and softly opened it. They saw the guard 
still pacing back and forth. The young man got 
a knot of firewood, and, holding it ready to strike, 
waited for him to get to the window. As the 



168 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

guard passed it the young man struck him on the 
head with the knot of wood and knocked him 
senseless. Then he and the girl climbed out 
and ran off through the fields. The girl lost 
him somewhere in the dark, and ran on alone. 
At last, miles away from where she had escaped, 
she caught sight of us beside the road and knew 
she was saved. 

She drew two pieces of bread from her dr^ss, 
and told us they were all that she had left to 
keep her from starving. Her home was gone, 
her parents had been killed by the shell that 
destroyed it, and she had nothing in the world 
but the clothes she wore and those two pieces of 
bread. 

Our Captain gave her a little money and sent 
her down the line to be turned over to the care 
of the Koyal Garrison Artillery. 

A little later we came to a farm-house full 
of old men, women and children whose homes 
had been destroyed. A very old man with a 
white beard owned the farm-house, and had 
lived there alone. Then the Germans came 
and destroyed almost all the houses in the neigh- 
bourhood. Whenever the old man heard of a 
homeless family he sent for them and took them 



VICTIMS OF THE HUNS 169 

in under his roof, until now almost all liis neigh- 
bours were there. It was a big house, and he 
had enough wine and wheat cakes to keep them 
all from starving for a time. 

When the Germans came the old man was 
away on a visit to Amiens. On his return he 
found that his daughter and his grandchildren 
had been killed by the soldiers, and he was all 
alone in the world. Then he made a vow that 
all the rest of his life he would help his home- 
less neighbours, and that his home should al- 
ways be theirs until they could build new homes 
of their own. 

Glad I was when at last we heard the big 
shells screeching over our heads again. We 
could forget then all that we had seen and 
heard on the march through the land of tears. 
That is what I had heard one of our officers call 
it — the land of tears. And I know he was right. 

We had no more than heard our first shell 
when along came that funeral-faced Welshman 
w'e had known at Ypres, and I knew there was 
trouble in the wind. What he was doing down 
there I don 't know to this day, for there wasn 't 
a sign of his regiment, but there he was all alone 
and as gloomy as ever. 



170 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

**Hey, there, *Ard Luck!'^ Bonesey sung out. 
*^You forgot something. 'Ow is it yer wasn't 
predictin ' that rain and mud and fightin ' we got 
into down by the Eiver Lys 1 ' ' 

Old Hard Luck stopped for half a minute, and 
called after us as we passed him. 

^'Now, I'm tellin' you," he said, ^ there's 
goin' to be trouble down where you're goin'." 

That was all we heard, and we had to wart till 
we got there to find out what the trouble was 
to be. 



CHAPTEE XXIII 

AN ENEMY LEAVES US 

LOUDER and louder the big guns spoke as 
we moved on into the South, and we 
thought the Boches must have made up their 
minds to get even for the beating we had given 
tliem in Flanders. We passed regiments that 
had just come out of battle and they told us 
Fritzie was as busy as a bee all along the front 
as far as Arras. Now and then on the road 
we got a bad dose of his shell-fire, so we knew 
we must be marching along the edge of his main 
line and that at any hour he might move for- 
ward and attack us or that we might be sent in 
after him. 

At one spot the shells were falling in the road, 
and we had to move out through the fields. It 
was while we were crossing those farms that 
the Boche artillery got the range on us and 
killed some of our men. 

Then a shell struck a few steps away from 
me and burrowed into the ground under my 

171 



172 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

feet. The explosion sent me np into the air, 
and when I fell the flying earth came down and 
buried me deep. Some of the lads set to work 
with shovels trying to dig me out, and if they 
hadn 't worked fast I should have been done for. 
They dug down till they came to one of my feet, 
and they pulled me out by the leg. I was half 
dead, and it took some time to bring me back 
to life, but they doctored me up and I was as 
sound as ever. I hadn't got a scratch. 

**You weren't made to get killed. Mascot," 
said Billy. **If the Boches had a bullet with 
your number you 'd have got it by this time, with 
all the fighting you've been through, and it's 
the same way with me. There's no bullets with 
our numbers. Mascot, and we'll both pull 
through this bloomin ' war alive. ' ' 

I began to think the same thing myself after 
all the close squeezes I had had. Many a lad 
in our company had got the idea in his head that 
he couldn't be killed because he had come 
through so much fighting without a scratch. 
But I wasn't so sure myself. I had known a 
chap who had been in the war ever since the 
Battle of the Marne, and because he had been 
lucky he, too, had got the notion that there was 



AN ENEMY LEAVES US 173 

no bullet with his number. The idea made him 
brave and reckless, and he took all kinds of 
chances. But there was a bullet with his num- 
ber after all, and it got him at last in the Bat- 
tle of Flanders. 

Soon we got into the fighting again, but it 
wasn't in the trenches this time. We found 
the Boches in a village, where, as they lay hid- 
den in the cellars of ruined houses, they fired at 
us with machine guns. Our artillery opened 
up on them, and then we went in with the bayo- 
nets. They raked the streets with their ma- 
chine gun fire, and we had to shelter ourselves 
behind the broken walls of the buildings. Then 
we would run out when the firing died down, 
and charge them. We cleaned them out of one 
cellar after another. It was like fighting rats in 
a pit, and it was just like rats that they squealed 
when they found the British terriers jumping 
in on top of them and giving them the cold steel. 

There was one cellar on top of a little rise in 
the ground where the Boches gave us the hard- 
est work of all. They had several machine 
guns with them and they were behind broken 
stone walls that were a foot thick. Two or 
three times they drove us back, and it looked as 



174 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

if we should have to lose many men before get- 
ting them. Our officers called us off after a 
time. 

^^I'm goin' to get those blighters meself/* I 
heard the fat bomber say. He had a talk with 
our Captain, and then disappeared. The next 
time I saw him he was crawling along on his 
stomach behind some piles of broken stones. 
From there he crept into a patch of long. grass 
on the slope leading up to the cellar where the 
Bodies lay. A few minutes later he ran for- 
ward, ri^ht in front of the muzzles of their 
guns. It was the bravest deed I had ever seen. 
In a moment he was up on the cellar wall. 

Then there came a crash, followed by another 
almost in the same second. A cloud of smoke 
and dirt rose up, and we gave a yell and charged. 
There wasn't a man left to meet us — only the 
dead and wounded — but just outside the wall we 
found the fat bomber crouching low and nurs- 
ing an ugly cut in his forehead. 

There was still some fighting going on in 
other parts of the village, but it didn't last long. 
We passed big groups of Hun prisoners, and 
more were running in all the time with their 
hands raised and calling, **Kamerad!'' 



AN ENEMY LEAVES US 175 

Then we began the search for our dead and 
wounded, and there were many of them, for the 
machine guns had been pouring a dreadful fire 
into us. 

It was then, as I was helping in the search, 
that I found, lying beside a cellar wall, a lad 
whose face I thought I knew, though it was 
covered with blood and dirt. He was still alive 
and just able to call out feebly for help, but he 
was going fast. 

** Blimey !^^ he whispered as I bent over him. 
^^So it's you, ye little devil!'' 

Then I knew him. It was Spike. 

** 'Old me up, matie," he pleaded in a voice 
so weak I could hardly hear him. * ' I knows I 'm 
goin', for it's gettin' dark." 

The sun was shining down on us, but I knew 
the light was going out for him for good and all. 

*^I 'opes the Lord may forgive me for the 
black deeds I've done," he mumbled. ^^Take 
me 'and, matie, and say there's no 'ard feelin's 
before I goes." 

So I took his hand, and the next moment his 
eyes closed and I heard a rattle in his throat. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

THE FIGHT IN THE STONE HOUSE 

VEEY often in the trenches or on the march 
I thought of the far-away ^* Treasure Is- 
land" nights in my room at home, and I would 
say to myself, ** Tommy, you never expected 
then that some day you^d be going Jim Hawkins 
one better, did you now?'^ 

I bring in Jim Hawkins again because I am 
drawing near to an adventure that has reminded 
me ever since of the liveliest part of that boy's 
story, the pirates' attack on the block-house. 
Many times at home I had dreamed about that 
block-house fight, and of course in the dream 
I wasn't Tommy Kehoe but the Hawkins boy. 
Dreams like that don't come true once in a 
million times, but mine did. Only in my case 
the heroes were outside and the villains within. 
But our block-house fight made the crowd on 
Treasure Island seem like blooming swabs. 

We were marching cheerily along toward 

176 



FIGHT IN THE STONE HOUSE 177 

Arras, and must have been about six miles from 
the town. It was four o 'clock of a warm, sunny 
afternoon. Our throats were dry and our 
stomachs empty, but our hearts were light 
enough, for we were looking forward to bully- 
beef, biscuits and tea, and perhaps a fine, hot 
stew at the end of the day's march, and a good 
sleep beside the road. Some of the lads were 
singing, and Billy Matchett and I were talking 
of what we might expect in the way of fighting 
at Arras. 

In front of us between bare fields lay a long 
stretch of white road. Way off near the sky 
line stood a gloomy-looking stone house. As we 
came nearer we saw that the windows were all 
smashed, and the roof torn by shells. There 
wasn't a sign of life about it, and I thought that 
whoever had lived there must have deserted it 
long ago. 

I can't say what it was about that dismal 
house that aroused my curiosity, for we had 
passed many a building that had been battered 
by shells, but for some reason I couldn't keep 
my eyes from it. There was something un- 
canny about the place, and I've learned that 
often when things are wrong while seeming to be 



178 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

all right there's something he can't explain 
inside a man that tells him so. 

We were within perhaps a hundred yards of 
the house when I thought I saw a man's head 
appear in one of the broken windows. The 
next moment came the dreadful click-click-click- 
click that we all had heard so often. Machine 
guns ! They were being fired from those win- 
dows. 

^^Typewriters!" cried Billy, his eyes grow- 
ing big. 

The same instant a man right in front of him 
fell forward and lay still. I saw two more 
drop before we could fall into position. 

In less than a minute we were lined up along 
the road, the front line lying flat on their stom- 
achs, the line behind them on their knees and 
the men in the rear standing up, and then our 
bullets began to patter against the walls of 
the house like a hailstorm. But those Germans 
were very well protected and had had plenty of 
time to make all their arrangements for de- 
fending themselves before opening fire on us. 

More of our men fell. It didn't look as if we 
could stay there much longer without being 
badly shot up. But there was no cover in 



FIGHT IN THE STONE HOUSE 179 

sight. We might have fallen back out of range 
and waited for the artillery to come up, but I 
suppose our officers wouldn't have cared to 
have the house shelled. Of course, as always, 
they must have wanted to take some prisoners. 
Prisoners are valuable because often the offi- 
cers can squeeze useful information out of 
them. There wouldn't have been any live pris- 
oners left if the artillery had got to work. 
And, besides, the artillery might be hours away 
for all we knew. 

The men spread out all around the house, and 
Fritzie didn't find us so easy to hit after that. 
We kept on pumping shot at them, hoping to 
throw such a hot fire through the windows 
that the machine gunners would have to go out 
of business. I think we did put one or two of 
their guns out of action, but at least one was still 
going and now and then one of our men would 
fall. 

The fight had been going on quite a time when 
one of our officers, who had been skirmishing 
about through the fields, came back with the 
news that he had found a big log, and some 
of the men went with him to get it. They came 
back in a few minutes lugging it along with 



180 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

them. It was the trunk of a tree, fifteen or 
twenty feet long and at least a foot thick. 

Eight away we saw what was in the wind. 
That log was going to be used as a battering 
ram. 

A squad of men got hold of it and went charg- 
ing down the road as fast as they could go, 
yelling like savages. In front of them, with 
a good grip on the end of the log, was old Bone- 
sey, the ex-burglar, on the way to the best bit 
of housebreaking he had ever done in his life, 
while Martin, the Scotland Yard man, was run- 
ning along behind keeping an eye on him. 

All of us who were still on that side of the 
house went tearing after them. The machine 
gun bullets were spattering all around us in 
the dust, but we didn't care. It was a brand- 
new kind of an adventure, and we were wild to 
get into it. On the march my feet had dragged 
as if they had been weighted down with lead, 
but I had forgotten all about being tired and 
raced along like a two-year-old just out of the 
paddock. Fighting in the trenches was about 
as exciting as a prayer meeting compared to 
this. 

Old Bonesey and the rest of the crowd with 



FIGHT IN THE STONE HOUSE 181 

the ram were making a bee line for the front 
door of the house. One of them dropped dead 
when they were within thirty yards of it, but 
the rest kept on without so much as hesitating 
and came up against the door at full speed. 
The big log struck it square in the centre. 
There was a tremendous crash, and the whole 
door flew into pieces. 

Half a dozen men dove through the broken 
door before the splinters had stopped flying. 
By the time I got there the ground floor was so 
jammed with Huns and Tommies that there 
wasn^t room to swing a gun. 

I think the first men to rush in must have 
killed or wounded a good many of the Germans, 
but there were still plenty of them to be ac- 
counted for. It was the liveliest hand-to-hand 
fighting I had ever seen. There was scarcely 
room for bayonet work or even for shooting, 
though now and then a gun would go off. Our 
men were using their knives and their fists. 
The yells and groans and occasional shots made 
a terrible noise. 

It wasn't the sort of a mess for me to be 
getting into, for I was altogether too small for 
such close hand-to-hand work as that and I 



182 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

couldn't see a Fritzie in the lot who didn't stand 
head and shoulders above me. I had more than 
one chance to knife one of them in the back, but 
doing that is too much like Fritzie 's own style 
of fighting. 

I say there wasn't room to swing a gun, but 
there was one exception. In a corner of the 
room stood a big Prussian who was using the 
butt of his gun as a club, and nobody could get 
near him. He could have been shot, of course, 
but either nobody cared to fire at him or nobody 
thought of it. I think it must have been the fun 
of a hand-to-hand fight with him that kept them 
from shooting. His gun was swinging like the 
sail of a windmill in a gale, and a Tommy with 
his knife in his hand who tried to crawl under 
it was knocked flat. 

At this the big Hun gave a roar like a lion 
and began to bellow names at us. He called 
us pigs, and probably a good many worse things, 
too, but it didn't hurt our feelings much since 
we couldn't understand more than one word in 
ten. 

' ' Put the steel to 'im ! Put the steel to 'im ! " 

The whole roomful of us was yelling and 
pushing and struggling to get near. 



FIGHT IN THE STONE HOUSE 183 

A moment later one of our lads jabbed at 
him with a bayonet, but Fritzie parried it and 
sent the Tommy ^s gun flying against the wall. 
It must have been two or three minutes that 
he held everybody off. Then a Tommy made a 
spring for him, as quick as a cat, and drove a 
knife into him. Fritzie ^s gun dropped with a 
crash to the floor, and he fell on top of it. 

The big room in which all this fighting took 
place covered almost all the ground floor, but 
there was a little adjoining room, and I saw 
some of the Tommies standing at the door and 
looking into it. I squeezed in among them, and 
there before us lay a man, a woman and a baby 
stone dead. They had been stabbed with bayo- 
nets. I never felt so much like fighting as 
when I saw that little baby lying there. Old 
Bonesey was in the group at the door, and, 
though he as well as all of us had seen many 
dreadful things before that day, there were 
big tears running down his face. He wasn't a 
bad sort of a burglar after all, poor old Bone- 
sey. 

By that time the fighting on that floor was 
over. There wasn't a live German left on it 
who wasn't wounded, but several had jumped 



184 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

through the windows and had been captured by 
men watching outside. But there was a stair- 
case running down along the wall of the big 
room, and two men among several who had tried 
to climb it had been shot down by Germans who 
were lying flat on the upper landing. 

A dozen Tommies made a rush for the stairs, 
but the Germans, lying well sheltered on the 
floor at the top, shot down into the thick of the 
crowd, hitting three or four, and sending the 
rest back to cover. It began to look as if four 
or ^ye Fritzies could hold those stairs against 
a regiment. 

For a moment after that last rush for the 
stairs all the noise died down, and we heard 
from the floor above a sound that made us all 
stand still and listen. It was a queer, whimper- 
ing cry. We knew no man would cry like that. 
It might have been a woman, but it sounded 
more like a child. 

^ ^ The devils ! ' ' snarled a man in front of me 
under his breath, and sprang for the stairs. 
Just in time somebody pulled him back. It 
would have been sure death for him if he had 
gone a few steps more. 

It was Bonesey who showed us how to do it. 



FIGHT IN THE STONE HOUSE 185 

Housebreaking was just in his line, and he knew 
exactly how to go about the work that lay before 
us. He whispered a few words to a sergeant, 
and then rushed outdoors. Most of us followed 
him. 

^^Keep your bloomin' mouths shut!" warned 
the Sergeant as we went out. 

We followed Bonesey around to the rear of 
the house. There we saw him climbing to the 
shoulders of a Tommy, who stood against the 
pillar of a porch, whose roof jutted out from 
under the second-story windows. He went up 
to the roof like a monkey, with the rest of us 
after him as fast as we could get there. Then 
we made a rush for the windows. With the 
points of their bayonets the men in front drove 
the Germans back and jumped into the house. 

I got there just behind the first rush, and the 
way our men were cleaning out those Germans 
was a sight a man isn't likely to set eyes on 
once in a lifetime unless he's born lucky. 

Right in the centre of the big room — there was 
only one room on that floor — a Tommy had 
gripped a Hun by the throat and was stran- 
gling the life out of him. Another Fritzie 
knocked me flat as he fell over me with a knife 



186 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

thrust clear through him. Our men hadn't for- 
gotten what they had seen in the little room 
downstairs, and they were not taking any more 
prisoners. They were not letting any more go 
wounded, either. They meant quick death for 
every Hun in sight, and that place was a slaugh- 
ter house for a few minutes. 

Then came a rush of feet on the stairs. The 
Tommies below had been listening to the fight- 
ing, and hadn't been able to hold themselves 
back any longer. Two or three shots rang out 
as the Germans on the landing fired down into 
them, but it would have taken artillery to have 
stopped that maddened crowd. They drove the 
Germans at the top back into the room and came 
piling in after them. 

Suddenly, as all that mass of fighting men 
drove in on us, came a frightful crash. The 
whole house seemed to be going to pieces. The 
shell-torn roof had fallen in on us, and we were 
half buried in the ruins. The air was so full 
of flying dust and splinters and plaster that we 
could scarcely see. 

The falling timbers had knocked me off my 
feet. I picked myself up, sound enough except 
for a few bruises, and looked around me, won- 



FIGHT IN THE STONE HOUSE 187 

dering whether anybody but myself had been 
left alive in all that wreckage. Then I saw 
Tommies everywhere rubbing the dust and 
plaster out of their eyes, and most of them un- 
hurt, though one had been killed by a falling 
beam and several were badly cut and bruised. 
The strangest sight of all was a Tommy crawl- 
ing about with a knife in his hand making sure 
no Germans were left alive under the rubbish. 

Dead Germans were everywhere in the ruin, 
and the walls were covered with blood. As I 
stood there half dazed I thought of the whimper- 
ihg cry we had heard when in the room below, 
and wondered what it could have been. For a 
moment I could see nothing but the Tommies 
and the dead Germans. Then, in a dark corner, 
I saw two girls cowering close together on the 
floor. One looked to be not more than fourteen 
years old and the other a year or two younger. 
They looked as if they were ready to faint with 
fright, and there was a half -mad stare in their 
big, dark eyes. All the bloody work that had 
been done in that room as they crouched there 
must have seemed like a terrible dream to them. 

We got them out of that awful place as soon 
as we could. Out in the fields, in the bright sun- 



188 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

shine, a little colour came back into their cheeks, 
and after a little time they became less fright- 
ened and were able to talk with us. 

They told us that just before we had appeared 
on the road the Germans had killed their father, 
mother and baby sister. The Germans had been 
drinking, and acted like madmen. They began 
to break open wine casks in the cellar, and be- 
came worse than ever. Then they dragged the 
two little girls to the floor above. We had come 
in sight just in time to save them. 

A little later the London Scottish Regiment 
came in sight, and we turned the little girls over 
to them. Then we marched on. 



CHAPTER XXV 



BACK in the time when I read creepy stor- 
ies at home and dreamed about them af- 
terward in the night it seemed strange to wake 
np and find myself in my qniet room, with the 
sun shining in at the window, so soon after be- 
ing on some wild island or hiding aboard ship 
from mutineers. Blind Pew would be gripping 
my arm or Long John Silver holding a gun at 
my head, then quick as a flash they would fade 
away — and there I would be, in bed, looking 
out through the window at the roofs. 

It was the same sort of a feeling I had as we 
marched away from that stone house while the 
sun was shining on the fields and the birds were 
singing all around us and everything was so 
quiet and peaceful. It seemed as if I must have 
dreamed the dreadful things that had been 
happening only a few minutes before. I turned 
my head for a last look at the place, half think- 
ing it might have faded away, as those dreams 

189 



190 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

had done back home. But there it was against 
the sky, the gloomiest, creepiest-looking house 
I should ever care to see. It seemed then more 
dreadful than before, with its broken roof and 
its dark empty windows, for I knew there was 
blood trickling down its stairs and that there 
were dead men lying on the floors. 

Out between those fields the war seemed very 
far away, for there wasn't a sound but the. birds 
and the voices of the soldiers. Our wagons, 
which sometimes made such a rumbling and 
rattling, were way off to the rear. Almost al- 
ways there had been the sound of distant firing, 
but now we heard not a gun. 

<< 'Twould be nice, to my way of thinkin', if 
we should find the bloomin' war hall over, and 
'ear they was sendin' us back to Blighty, '^ said 
Bonesey, who was marching beside me. '^I'm 
tired of the fightin'. Mascot. I want to get 
back to Blighty, and 'ear the noises in the 
streets, and see the people goin' by, and drop 
in at a pub for a swig o ' beer. 'Alf dead I am 
for a glass o' good oP Lunnon beer down me 
throat. ' ' 

^^It's my morning tub I'm dying for," put 
in Billy. **I haven't had a bath in a week, 



AN OLD PAL **GOES WEST'' 191 

and there's the blood of one of those bloomin' 
Huns back there on my hands this minute. Per- 
haps we'll come to a brook soon." 

^*Yer must 'ave some fish blood in yer," 
Bonesey grumbled. ^' Never 'ave I 'eard of a 
bloke so fond of sousin' 'imself in water." 

^^Give us a song, Billy," I said, *'and you'll 
forget about the morning tub." 

So he gave us some old-timers, *^Silk Hat 
Tony," '^The Lights o' London" and ''The 
Girl from Dundee." Soon there was singing 
all along the road — nice, peaceful songs, with 
no fighting or trouble in them — as if we hadn't 
been putting the bayonets to a houseful of Huns 
only a little time before and losing some of our 
own lads while we were doing it. 

Our kitchen wagons came up a little later and 
gave us our supper beside the road, and we spent 
the night there, getting a fine long sleep in the 
dry grass, with the stars blinking down at us. 

When we woke up in the morning we heard 
the guns going to the south of us, and we knew 
it might be many a night before we should get 
the chance of another such rest. 

''Funny 'ow I keeps thinkin' of Blighty, Mas- 
cot," said Bonesey, as we rolled up our blankets. 



192 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

* ^ I wants to get out o ^ the figlitiii ' and go back 
there w'ere it^s peaceful. I 'ad a bad dream 
last night, and something's goin' to 'appen to 
me if I don't." 

But the big guns were calling us again, and 
there wasn't a chance of going back to Blighty 
yet unless we got hit. 

^* 'Ear them guns," Bonesey grumbled. 
^'Hits always them guns, sayin' ' 'Urry up' to 
us poor blokes. And we'll 'urry up once too 
often and ^go west,' where there's many a good 
lad gone before us who's lyin' under the daisies 
now. ' ' 

We got to the edge of Arras that morning, and 
the Boches were waiting for us in houses and 
cellars and behind piles of broken stones. Our 
artillery was playing on them, but it didn't seem 
to do much good. We infantry lads were the 
ones for that kind of work. The big guns might 
have pounded away there for a month with- 
out cleaning the Huns out from such hiding 
places. 

So in we went, and it was ticklish work and 
not to my liking, for we could never tell when 
a typewriter was going to shoot at us from a 
house or a cellar. Even raiding a trench back 



AN OLD PAL '^GOES WEST" 193 

in Flanders, though, so help me ! that was bad 
enough, seemed better than this fighting in the 
streets. We knew what to expect and what we 
had to do when we went over the top and across 
No Man's Land, but here we didn't know what 
kind of trouble might be waiting for us. 

Not so much as the shadow of a German did 
we see as we came to the streets, and the place 
was as quiet as a graveyard. A hungry-looking 
cat crept across the way in front of us and was 
the only living thing in sight. 

Oh, what a place it was ! Grass and weeds 
growing in the wide cracks of the cobble-stone 
paving, heaps of bricks and stones where houses 
had stood, rows of houses still standing, but 
roofless and with only ugly holes where the win- 
dows had been. 

I jumped when I heard the rattle of a machine 
g-un, it came so suddenly out of the quiet. All 
at once the guns began to play on us from at 
least half a dozen places. 

In our first rush we took some cellars from 
which the Germans had been shooting at us. 
They kept their guns going till our front line 
was almost on top of them, and then threw up 
their hands, yelling ' ' Kamerad ! ' ' But our lads 



194 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

didn't think they had surrendered soon enough, 
and they gave some of them the bayonets by way 
of a lesson. Fritzie had a nasty way of keeping 
his gun going till the last second and then rais- 
ing that ^^Kamerad*' cry, just as if he hadn't 
been shooting our men down as long as he could 
after he knew his game was up. 

There came firing from some half -destroyed 
houses farther on, and we knew the hardest 
work was yet to be done, for the Boches were 
protected by stone walls and there was any 
number of hiding places for their snipers. It 
was a matter of crawling along in the shelter 
of walls and rubbish heaps till We could get 
near them. 

About twenty of us were working our way 
through a narrow lane when a bullet hit the 
ground a couple of yards in front of me. It 
had come from a little cottage a few yards 
ahead. We fired at the windows, and then we 
made a rush at the place and broke the door 
down. As it fell in a machine gun began to 
bark in another house near by, and, huddled all 
together as we were, we were a fine target. 
Before we could all dive in through the broken 
door the gun got two of our party and bored 



AN OLD PAL ^^GOES WEST'' 195 

a hole through the helmet of a third without 
hurting him. 

Inside a dead German lay on the floor, but, 
except for him, the house seemed to have been 
deserted. A corporal bent over the dead man 
and felt of him. 

^^He's stone cold,'' he said. ^^And what's 
more there's no gun beside him. So where 's 
the bloke that shot at us! He can't have gone 
out through the back, for our men have been 
coming up on that side." 

We had a bomber with us, and he went nos- 
ing about to see if there were any place where 
he should drop the stuff he carried. The upper 
story had been blown off by shells, so there was 
only the floor we were on and the cellar where 
any one might be hiding. We poked about be- 
hind piles of rubbish and into what was left of 
a closet, and looked into a broken chimney-hole, 
but we found nobody. 

^'^We might take a look in the cellar," I said 
to the Corporal. 

^^And get our heads blown off like as not," 
he answered. ^ ^ We '11 let the lad with the bombs 
attend to the cellar. Clear out through the back 
while he does the trick." 



196 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

We went out through the windows into a lit- 
tle walled court, and watched the bomber creep 
up to the door over the cellar stairs. He lifted 
the door a foot or two, dropped in a bomb and 
made a dive for a window. The explosion shook 
the walls, and sent the door flying into splinters. 

When the smoke had cleared away the bomber 
went back to the stairs, and we followed him 
down below into the dark. 

'*Why, here's a rum go,'' the bomber said 
as the Corporal struck a light. ^^ There's two 
cellars here, with a thick wall between 'em." 

A heavy, iron-braced door in the wall had 
been burst open by the explosion and the bomber 
was stepping up to it when four men rushed out 
on us. The Corporal's light went out, and we 
were there in the dark, not knowing who was 
friend and who was Hun. 

I remember a shiver ran through me after 
the light went out, for it was a dreadful thing to 
be penned up in a black hole with enemies that 
couldn't be seen and with the thought that any 
moment one of them might run a bayonet 
through me without my having a chance of dodg- 
ing or parrying it. At the same time I heard 
a scuffle, then a groan and the thud of a body 



AN OLD PAL ^^GOES WEST^^ 197 

falling on the dirt floor, though there was no 
telling whether it was a Hun or one of our own 
lads who had dropped. 

It was then that the Corporal did a brave 
thing, which no man careful of his life would 
have risked in such a situation. He struck 
another light. 

The same instant a gun went off, and the 
Corporal, with a cry, let the match drop, for 
the bullet had hit him somewhere. But the 
light had done its good work, for in the second 
that it flared we got sight of the four Boches, 
one of them dead or wounded, and we made for 
the three that were up and ready for us. When 
somebody struck another light they had been 
done for. We hadn't lost a man, though the 
Corporal was holding up a wounded hand which 
the bullet had struck. 

Up from that musty black hole we climbed, 
without stopping to waste useful time in bury- 
ing the bodies or dragging them along with us, 
and it was as good as a drink to a dying man 
to be in the light of day again, knowing which 
way to turn, and where to strike when the next 
shot came. 

Tommies were running by in front, so, think- 



198 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

ing the machine gun that had fired on ns as we 
broke through the door must have been silenced 
by then, we went out and joined them. 

At the end of the lane a wounded man — one 
of our own lads — ^was dragging himself on his 
hands and knees from the doorway of what was 
left of a house. Such a common sight were 
wounded men that I scarcely noticed him at 
first, but, as we drew nearer, I took another look, 
and for a moment my heart stopped beating. 

^^It's poor old Bonesey,'' said the Corporal. 

Yes, it was poor old Bonesey ; and badly hurt, 
for he was hardly able to move. As we gath- 
ered round him he took no notice of us, and then 
I saw that a bullet had struck him near the eyes 
and that he was stone blind. 

^^It's the Mascot, old pal,'' I said as I bent 
over him. * ' We 're going to take you along with 

us."' '' !--^"^'^ 

*^No use of that, little man," he answered, 
**for I'm goin' fast, and ye 'ad best let me die 
'ere as elsewhere. Gimme a drink of water, 
Matie ; just enough to moisten me pipes, for I'm 
burnin' up." 

Though it was against orders to give water 
to a wounded man, I let a few drops from my 



AN OLD PAL ^^GOES WEST^' 199 

bottle trickle into his mouth — hardly enough to 
swallow — and it seemed to do him a lot of good. 

'^Many a time me old mother 'as told me I'd 
be shot sooner or later sneakin' into somebody's 
'ouse," he said. ^^And 'ere it's come true — 
way down 'ere in France. But there's no job 
for Scotland Yard in it." 

A spell of coughing stopped him and seemed 
to shake out of him all the little strength he had 
left, but he found his voice again after a mo- 
ment. 

*^ There's the address of the girl back 'ome 
that I've told yer about in me pay-book, lad. 
Send 'er a line sayin' I was a good soldier and 
died servin' me country, will yerT' 

Then he went west, where the good soldiers 
go, and I had lost as fine a friend as a lad ever 
had. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

INTO THE TEENCHES AGAIN 

LITTLE time there was to mourn for my 
old pal, for our men were moving on, 
cleaning out the Boche nests in front of us, 
while the stretcher-bearers were hard at work 
picking up the wounded and the dead. 

We pressed on, with the Germans running 
and scattering before us, and my fighting blood 
was up as we picked them off when they showed 
in the open. One of them I got, by way of help- 
ing to square accounts for what they had done 
to Bonesey, though how is the death of a Hun, 
or of many of them, to balance against the loss 
of a good English soldier? 

All the rest of that day we were fighting, and 
all of the next, till there wasn't a fighting Ger- 
man left. Then we had a little rest and quiet, 
and we made ourselves comfortable in the 
houses that were still standing. 

Pour days later, when we were beginning to 
feel at home, the German artillery shelled us 

200 



INTO THE TEENCHES AGAIN 201 

and drove us out. Then their infantry swarmed 
in and took our places. But we didn't leave 
them long in comfort. As we had done before, 
we drove them before us from house to house 
and from cellar to ceUar. Day after day we 
fought there, and when we were through we had 
five hundred German prisoners, to say nothing 
of all their dead and wounded. Their dead lay 
everywhere, in streets and houses and cellars 
and yards, and it was a long job getting rid of 
them. 

We turned our prisoners over to the Bedford- 
shires, and marched away, for we had all we 
could stand of fighting for a while. For five 
days we rested in a big field. I slept in a hay- 
stack, and it was the finest bed I had had since 
leaving England. 

Oh, those w'ere days to remember! We had 
better meals than we had ever had before, and 
we dug potatoes, and boiled them in their 
jackets. We found a brook, where we bathed, 
and Billy grew cheerful again. We raked the 
cooties from our shirts, and washed our clothes 
and hung them up to dry. We got our hair 
cut, for it had grown so long that we looked like 
savages, and soon we made such a fine show- 



202 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

ing that nobody would have thought of calling 
us ^'the Scruffy Fifth." In the evenings we 
had concerts, and some of the lads gave a play. 
We could hear heavy firing miles away to re- 
mind us that the war was still going on, but 
no shells came our way, and our troubles were 
over for a time. 

* ' 'Ow would a chicken dinner appear to yer. 
Mascot f" said Piccadilly one morning. ^'I got 
me blinkers on a fine fat rooster a while back 
about a mile from ^ere, and I'm thinkin' 'e's 
better in our stomachs than roamin' loose. 
'Elp me catch the blighter and I'll give yer 
'alf of 'im.'^ 

We found the rooster sitting on a fence, 
watching us out of the corners of his eyes, and 
he was such a fine fat bird it made me hungry to 
look at him. 

^*I'll cluck at 'im," Piccadilly said, ^^and 'e 
may come. 'E looks like a sociable bloke. ' ' 

Piccadilly clucked, but the rooster just sat 
there blinking at us. 

'*' 'E don't hunder stand English," said Pic- 
cadilly. ' ' A little talkin ' of French at 'im and 
'e'd come." 

He tried the few French words he knew, but 



INTO THE TRENCHES AGAIN 203 

the rooster didn't move, and at last Piccadilly 
made a jump for him. The rooster flew off 
the fence and made off through the fields, with 
us after him. A lively runner that bird was, 
and we must have chased him for a mile. Then 
Piccadilly got him by the leg, and we made off 
with him. 

That evening I gave a bit of my share to 
Billy, and it seemed like the best meal we had 
ever had in our lives. After that we kept our 
eyes out for chickens, but we never found an- 
other. 

Sunday came wliile we were there in the 
field, and we had our first church service in 
months. It was a fine sight, all those Tommies 
on their knees out there in the open, thanking 
the Lord for bringing them through the fight- 
ing alive, though it was little we knew whether 
the next week might not be our last. 

It was to be the last for some of us, as it 
turned out, for the next day we made a ten- 
mile march and went into the trenches and the 
fighting. 

These trenches had been lined with cement by 
the Germans and were the finest we had ever 
seen; yet we didn't fare so well in them as we 



204 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

had done in Flanders, except that there was no 
mud to speak of. They were just as full of 
rats, bigger rats than those at Ypres and a good 
deal more dangerous, for they were the biting 
kind. After we heard that they had nipped the 
throats of four men, who had died from the 
poison of the bites, we feared the things far 
more than we did the Germans. 

A queer lad we met out there in front of 
Arras. He was the son of a rich baronet, and 
had been driving * ^ shakers, ' ' which is the name 
we had for motor cars. He was such a wild 
driver that he had put more than thirty of them 
out of business, he told us, but had come through 
every accident without a scratch. So unlucky 
he had been with the *^ shakers" that they had 
made him a stretcher-bearer, which is no less 
dangerous a job. 

'^Vve been in the war ever since it began," he 
said, ^*and all those three years IVe been trying 
to get a wound so I could get back to Blighty. 
But I've been unlucky. No matter how hard 
I try to get hit, there's no bullet with my num- 
ber. A hundred times IVe been out between 
the lines with the bullets flying all around me, 



INTO THE TRENCHES AGAIN 205 

yet here I am with nothing to show for it and 
getting more homesick all the time. ' ' 

One evening our Captain told us that at 
twelve o'clock that night we were going over 
the top. That had become an old story and it 
didn't worry us. After all the fine rest we 
had had we were in fighting trim and eager for 
trouble. At 11 :40 we were ready and waiting, 
and most of the lads braced themselves with a 
couple of drams of firewater. Sharp when the 
hour came we went over. 

We ran into the heaviest kind of firing and 
lost a good many men on the way. A bullet 
struck Piccadilly's helmet and knocked him 
over, but he was up again unhurt the next mo- 
ment. The Germans climbed out of their trench 
to meet us, and we went into them fast and hard. 

I got my bayonet into one of them and 
couldn't get it out. Another one was coming 
for me, so I put a foot on Fritzie 's chest, pulled 
with all the strength I had, and out the bayonet 
came just in time. The other chap was running 
for me and was so close that I didn 't have time 
to get ready for him, so I dodged, and he missed 
me by a foot. He turned and came at me again, 



206 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

and then I got him. He was a big one, too big 
and clumsy for bayonet work. I was glad I 
was small and wiry when I saw what easy 
marks some of the fat giants were. After a few- 
minutes we had won their trench and a lot of 
prisoners with it, and it had been easy work. 

Our prisoners told us they were tired of the 
war. Some of them hadn't liked it even when 
it began and they were not the soldier kind. 
One was a solemn-faced, middle-aged chap with 
big spectacles whom we called the professor. 
He had been a piano teacher in Germany, and 
he said the sight of blood made him sick. He 
was a gentle old boy, and it made me laugh to 
think of him trying to kill anybody with his 
bayonet. He had surrendered without even 
putting up a fight. 

But we knew too much about Kaiser BilPs 
army to think that many of them were such easy 
ones, though our hardest lesson from them was 
still ahead of us. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

I MEET **ISEAEL HANDS' 



NOW I come to a time when the luck that 
had brought so many of us through alive 
and unhurt would have little more to do with 
the Fighting Fifth ; a time that makes me won- 
der, when I look back upon it, that I am here 
among the living instead of lying under the 
daisies in France, where, by all but one of a 
thousand chances, I should be today. 

The German lines grew stronger and stronger 
as we lay there before them, and their artillery 
gave us no rest day or night. And yet we were 
to go forward. Those were the orders. We 
were to go forward, no matter what the cost, 
and we knew that many a lad of ours would go 
west before the fighting there was over. 

For hours at a time the shells flew over our 
heads or dropped among us, while we crouched 
on our knees in the bottom of the trench with 
our hands over our eyes, thinking every minute 
would be our last. The shell-fire shook our 

207 



208 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

nerves and took the heart out of us. It wouldn 't 
let us sleep, and sometimes it wouldn't let us 
eat, for in the thick of it bringing the food up 
from the cook-houses was a job too hard to han- 
dle. We thanked our stars when our own artil- 
lery grew strong and gave the Huns shell for 
shell, though we knew that that meant the time 
was nearer when we should have to go over 
the top into the hardest fighting of all. 

At last the German fire grew weaker, and our 
own big guns began to bellow worse than ever. 
They were clearing the way for us poor Tom- 
mies and giving us a chance against death. The 
sound of them was like music then, for we knew 
that every bark they gave made easier work for 
us and perhaps another gap or two in the 
trenches lying ahead. 

Then the day came when we were told we were 
going in. And we were going in by the light 
of day, a gray day, to be sure, but much too 
clear to please us. Four forty was the time 
set, and we went over the top on the minute. 

The Huns were ready for us, and they gave 
us such a dose of shells and bullets as I had 
never gone through before. We were not 
through our fences when the lads began to drop, 



I MEET ^^ ISRAEL HANDS'^ 209 

and one went down who was running shoulder 
to shoulder with me. He was a lad I knew 
well, but there was no chance to stop and help 
him or even to make sure whether he was dead 
or wounded. It was every man shift for him- 
self, and it was lie there and suffer and wait 
for the stretcher-bearers when you fell wounded, 
or perhaps for a German to run a bayonet 
through you if we were beaten back. 

A hot, stinging blow, a bullet cutting through 
the skin of my forehead, staggered me and 
blood came trickling down over my face. I ran 
on, but the bullets were flying so thick that I 
couldn^t see a chance of getting across. Dead 
and wounded men were everywhere, and the 
Fighting Fifth would be lucky if it wasn 't wiped 
out. The blood half blinded me and I began to 
feel afraid, for I knew that if I couldn't keep 
my eyes clear I should stand a small chance 
when it came to the hand-to-hand work. 

Half way across a bullet hit me in the thigh 
and I fell. I felt no pain to amount to much, 
but I couldn't move. Our lads ran on and left 
me, and from where I lay I watched them being 
mowed down. 

Then I saw their line break and some come 



210 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

back, but the rest ran on into what looked like 
sure death. As they drew near the trench the 
Germans came over the top with a yell, and went 
at them. Our lads were outnumbered three to 
one, but they fought till the last one of them was 
down or captured. 

The Huns came on, trampling on the dead and 
wounded, and I was lucky to escape their feet 
as they passed me. I saw them driving what 
were left of our men back into the trench, and 
I went cold as I thought of the bloody work 
they were doing with the bayonets to our poor 
lads. 

I was growing dizzy and weak, and oh, what 
a thirst I had ! There was water in my bottle, 
but I didn't have the strength to lift it to my 
lips. Near by was a wounded man dragging 
himself along with his arms, for his legs had 
gone bad. Close beside me he stopped, his 
strength going fast. 

**I can't go another yard, matie," he whis- 
pered, **and I'm done for. We're all done for, 
those of us that are out here, for the Huns will 
be back presently, and it's small pity they show 
to the wounded. They'll fix us with their bayo- 



I MEET ^aSRAEL HANDS'^ 211 

nets, like as not. IVe seen them do that to the 
wounded more than once. ' ' 

I asked him for a drink. Little I cared then 
what the Huns might do to us ; all I could think 
about was water. My life I would have given 
that moment, I think, for one swallow of cold 
water, and the bottle hanging by his side drove 
me half mad. He tried to raise himself up on 
his elbows again that he might crawl to me, but 
he was too weak to manage it. 

* * I can 't do it, matie, ' ' he said. ^ ' I can 't even 
reach the old bottle, and I'm half dead for a 
drink myself. '^ 

He was silent for a time, but before long I 
heard him groaning and calling for water in a 
voice that was not above a whisper. 

It grew dark, and the stars came out. The 
man beside me was gasping for air and now 
and then muttering to himself. I lay staring 
up at the sky, and it seemed as if there were a 
fire inside of me burning me up. After a long 
time I heard steps, and some Germans passed 
by a few yards off. They prowled about in 
plain sight, and as I watched them, not caring 
whether they found me or left me to lie there 



212 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

and thirst, I saw the dreadful thing happen that 
I had heard of so often. They were running 
their bayonets into the wounded. 

A cold shiver went through me, and the sky 
and the shell-holes and craters and the far-off 
hills began to go round and round. 

Then the stars went out, and I was back home, 
sitting up in bed reading about Jim Hawkins 
and hurrying over the pages for fear my mother 
would come stealing in and take the candle 
away. 

After a time the room dropped away into the 
dark, and I was Jim Hawkins himself, sitting 
on the cross-trees of the good ship Hispaniola, 
with Israel Hands below me coming up the 
mizzen-shrouds holding a dirk in his teeth. 

* * Jim, ^ ' says he, ' ^ I reckon we 're fouled, you 
and me, and we'll have to sign articles. I'd 
have had you but for that there lurch; but I 
don't have no luck, not I; and I reckon I'll have 
to strike, which comes hard for a master mariner 
to a ship's younker like you, Jim." 

All in a breath his hand went back over his 
shoulder, and the dirk sung through the air. 

Of a sudden Israel Hands' red cap changed 
to a helmet and the dirk became the butt of a 



I MEET ^^ ISRAEL HANDS'^ 213 

gun. The gun-butt struck me on top of the 
head, I felt a stinging pain, and everything went 
black. 

I came to in a dug-out hospital, where an M. 0. 
— a medical officer — and a woman nurse were 
standing beside me. 

^*How goes the fighting?'' I asked. 

^* Suppose you keep your mouth shut and lie 
quiet, ' ' the M. O. answered. ^ ^ You Ve been rav- 
ing about the fighting ever since we got you, 
and it's better you should think of something 
else. ' ' 

The nurse spoke a few words to him in 
French. 

*'I'll tell you this much," said the M. 0. as 
he turned to me again; ^^your battalion came 
back at the Huns and fought like wildcats. 
They cleaned the devils out, and, after driving 
them back where they came from, took a good 
part of their first line away from them. 
They've more than made up for getting beaten, 
and they are the proudest men in the army to- 
day." 

^*And then the stretcher-bearers picked me 
up!" 

^*No; a nurse found you — a French woman. 



214 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

She carried you in herself. You had been ly- 
ing out there forty-eight hours, and we thought 
you were done for when we got you here. 
There's a nasty scratch over your eyes, a wound 
in your thigh and a dent in your head from the 
butt of a gun, but you needn't worry. You'll 
pull through in time. ' ' 

I went under an operation a few minutes later, 
and twenty- four hours passed before I came 
back to consciousness. A nurse asked me where 
I lived and I tried to answer, but I found I 
couldn't say a word. For two days and nights 
I lay without speaking; then suddenly my 
speech came back to me. 

'*How goes the fighting?" I asked. 

**We're giving the Germans hell," said the 
M. 0. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

^* GOOD-BYE, OLD PALS!*' 

' 'XrOU'RE going back to Blighty/' the M. 0. 
X told me a few hours later. 

'^Whenr^ 

^*0h, in two or three days you will be on the 
way. ' ' 

**How goes the fighting nowf 

**Our line is still moving forward. Your 
Fighting Fifth has carried another trench, I 
hear. They deserve their name, those lads, for 
theyVe done great work. You should be 
proud you were one of them.'' 

I could feel every nerve in me tingle as I 
heard him praise our brave old battalion. 
Small need there was of his saying I should be 
proud to be one of them. There wasn't a 
prouder lad in the army. 

As I lay there in the dug-out listening to the 
artillery I wondered how many we had lost and 
whether any of my pals had fallen. More 
wounded were being brought in, but the few I 

215 



216 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

managed to see I didn't recognize. Before 
many hours the big guns stopped booming, and 
I knew the fighting must be over for a time. 

I had been in the dug-out three days when the 
M. 0. told me that before night they were go- 
ing to start me off toward Blighty. I didn't 
want to go without seeing some of my pals, and 
I told him so. The M. 0. shook his head. He 
said he didn't see how it would be possible. 
But, a little before the time came for me to 
start, in came Billy, McBride and Piccadilly. 
I don't know how they managed it, but there 
they were, just as much alive as ever. I told 
them I was going back to Blighty. 

^^ Never mind. Mascot," the Yankee lad said. 
^^You won't miss much, for the war is soon go- 
ing to be over. The Americans are coming in, 
and that'll settle it. Why, son, I know regi- 
ments back in New York that could lick their 
weight in wildcats. Ever hear of the Seventh 
or the Sixty-ninth? Believe me, Kaiser Bill 
will yell for help when he sees them coming for 
him." 

**If you're a fair sample, 'ow is it yer turned 
tail so quick w'en the Germans was drivin' us 
back?" Piccadilly asked, his eyes snapping. 



'* GOOD-BYE, OLD PALS!'^ 217 

* * Me ? ' ' said Mac, looking surprised. ^ * Why, 
I was holding 'em till there wasn't a man left 
to back me up. All the same, Pickie old sport, 
the Fifth's done pretty well in this war con- 
sidering there's been only one Yank to help 
'em." 

Piccadilly was boiling mad by this time. 

**I'd *Yank' yer if I 'ad yer outer 'ere," he 
growled. *^ 'Ave ye forgot this is a 'orspital 
we're in and no place for your boastin'?" 

They were working up to the fighting point 
and they might have reached it if a nurse had 
not told them to make peace and be quiet. 

^^ Those two are always going at each other 
like that," Billy explained to the M. 0., who 
had come up to find out what the trouble was 
about. ^^They don't mean anything by it. 
It's just a habit of theirs that they can't break. 
It don't make any difference where they are. 
They'll be jawing each other the same way in 
Heaven, if they ever get there." 

*'Tell the youngster what's been going on 
since he's been here," said the M. O. 

^'It would take a week to tell it," Mac an- 
swered. *^ Believe me, son, you've missed a lot. 
We've been mopping the Boches up fast. Some 



218 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

scrapping! "Wow! I got three with my bayo- 
net inside of three minutes. ' ' 

* ^You're a liar/' Piccadilly put in, keeping 
his voice low since the nurse had told him to 
be peaceful and quiet. ** 'Twas meself that got 
three, and you got none at all, as you know 
well.'' 

^'Let it pass," said Mac, keeping the tail of 
his eye on the M. 0. *^It don't matter. Maybe 
I made a mistake in the count. But anyway 
it was some scrapping." 

**Big Tom's out of it for good," Billy told 
me. ^^Got hit in the arm. He's going back 
to Blighty. We'll all be back there soon if it 
keeps up like this." 

**I'm thinking it's time to say good-bye," 
Piccadilly said. *^They told us not to stay 
long. ' ' 

He held out a grimy hand as big as the two 
of mine. 

' ' Good-bye, old pals, ' ' I said. ^ ^ I '11 be think- 
ing about you back in Blighty." 

Then they each said good-bye and a few words 
to cheer me, and marched out. As they went I 
heard Piccadilly say: 

**Wot are we goin' to do for a mascot now? 



*^ GOOD-BYE, OLD PALS!'' 219 

We'll 'ave to get a dog, or a cat or something. 
Any kind of animal will do to bring us luck. ' ' 

A little later I and a number of other wounded 
lads were carried out and put into a ^ ^ shaker, ' ' 
and away we rolled for the railroad. I learned 
then why they called the ambulances *^ shakers." 
The life was almost shaken out of me before 
we had gone half a mile. Every time the thing 
bumped or lurched a chorus of groans went up, 
and one chap fainted and didn't come to all the 
rest of the ride. Every jolt set my wounds 
throbbing and paining till I wished the Boches 
had done for me for good and all and had saved 
me from all that misery. It took two dreadful 
hours to get to the railroad, and we were all half 
dead by that time. 

The train wasn't much better than the 
** shaker," though being full of wounded it trav- 
elled slowly. The wound of the lad next to me 
was bleeding, and his eyes were closed. I 
think he must have passed out before we got 
to the end of the journey. Even now I never 
think of that ride without a shiver, and I can 
still hear the cries and groans that sounded all 
day long around me. 

At last they carried us out and into the base 



220 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

hospital at Boulogne, and the place was Heaven 
after the *' shaker'^ and the train. There were 
clean white sheets to lie in — the first I had 
seen since leaving England — and good food, and 
everything to make us comfortable. But there 
was one thing I missed, the noise of the guns. 
The stillness got on my nerves. If I could have 
heard artillery going good and strong and ma- 
chine guns rattling outside the windows the 
place would not have seemed so strange and I 
should have rested easier. 

The nurses gathered round my cot the first 
day I was there to get a look at me, for I was 
the only patient they had had of my age and 
there was much talk of the ^'boy soldier,'^ 
though it was little I felt like a boy after all I 
had been through. Small I was, and young, 
but I felt ten years older than before we went 
into the trenches at Ypres, and I had seen more 
trouble than many a man does in a lifetime. 

One morning I was lying in my cot, staring up 
at the ceiling, when a big shadow fell across me 
and a voice I knew well cried out, *^Why, bless 
my blooming eyes, if it isn't the Mascot !'' 

It was Big Tom, looking as healthy and 
strong as an ox, though one of his arms was in 



« 



*^ GOOD-BYE, OLD PALS!^' 221 

a sling. For a time he stood beside me, telling 
of his last fight and of how he got his wound, 
and then lumbered off to board the boat that 
was to take him back to England. 

Two weeks I lay in the Boulogne hospital, 
and then the day came when they shipped me 
for old Blighty. It was a fine, clear day, with 
a breeze blowing strong and salty from the 
sea, and the wounded were all happy the time 
had come when they were to see their friends 
and families again. Out on the pier some of 
them were singing feebly, ^'Take Me Back to 
Dear Old Blighty, ^^ and ^^The Ship That's 
Bound for England. '^ 

It was a hard crossing for us all, for the 
boat rolled up and down in the big sea swells 
till I wished myself back at Boulogne. I was 
in bed on the upper deck, strapped down with 
weights, with not a soul to talk to and noth- 
ing to do but listen to the chugging of the en- 
gines and the splashing of the sea. Out in 
mid-channel I overheard a nurse saying that 
three operations were going on at that very 
moment and that a wounded man had passed 
west a few minutes before. Then people came 
hurrying past me talking of a submarine that 



222 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

was chasing us, and I didn't know for a time 
whether it was Blighty or the bottom of the sea 
I was going to. But the submarine dropped 
out of sight, and at last we steamed into Dover. 
There we landed, but we were soon afloat again 
on the way to Folkestone and London. 

I heard the little river steamers chugging as 
we went up the Thames, and the breezes from 
the fields of old England were in our faces, and 
I felt like a lad coming out of a dream, and a 
bad one, with the war so far away and home so 
near. 



4i 



CHAPTER XXIX 

I MEET THE KING 

''Up to mighty London came an Irish lad one day." 

SO the good old song goes; but he wasn't 
wounded and flat on his back as I was. 

As far back as I could remember I had 
longed to see the greatest city in the world. 
When I was a very young lad — not more than 
eight or ten — I had been near to running away 
from home to find my way to it and to stay 
there until I had had a good look at the King. 
A cat may look at a king, and so could I if ever 
I could find my way to the Buckingham Palace 
gate and should wait there long enough. And 
here I was at last in mighty London with small 
chance of seeing any of its wonders or of get- 
ting to Buckingham Palace or anywhere else 
but a hospital. 

The boat came into her pier, and I could hear 
them making her fast. In a few minutes I was 
put on a stretcher and carried down the gang- 
plank in a long line of wounded. 

223 



224 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

I heard cheers, and, lifting my head a bit, 
I saw a great crowd of people. They were there 
to welcome us — men, women and children, thou- 
sands of them. Then the stretcher-bearers 
stopped, and, looking up again, I saw, close by, 
a smaU, bearded man in a general's uniform 
standing in the centre of a group of officers. 
He came up to me and held out his hand. 

It was the King. The King of England was 
shaking hands with me, a poor, wounded 
Tommy ! 

*^How do you feelT' he asked. 

For a moment I couldn't find my voice, and 
the thought was running through my head, 
* ' What would they think back home if they knew 
the King was speaking to mef" At last I 
managed to say, though not much above a whis- 
per, 

**I am all right, sir.'' 

He looked at me for a moment with very 
serious eyes. 

*^Your age?" he asked. 

I told him, and he gave a little start of sur- 
prise. 

^'Sixteen! So young!" he said. **At your 
age you should never have been there. But. 



I MEET THE KING 225 

my boy, if all the men of England showed such 
spirit we should soon win the war.'' 

He made way for some one, and I saw the 
Queen beside me. She gave me her hand and 
passed on. As she disappeared the officers 
came crowding up to shake hands with me, and 
then the King saluted us and turned away. 

That is how I met King George. Small 
chance that ever I should shake his hand again, 
but I had that moment to remember for the 
rest of my life. A finer man I never spoke with. 
May his reign be long. God save the King ! 

The line of stretchers moved on, and when my 
mind had cleared a bit from the excitement I 
began to wonder what Billy and Piccadilly and 
the rest of the lads would say if they heard 
King George himself had spoken with me. I 
felt sorry for those poor chaps, facing the shells 
and bullets and sleeping with the rats in the 
trenches, while here I was, welcomed by the 
King and Queen and their officers and cheered 
as a hero by the crowds. 

A line of sixty ambulance motor cars was 
waiting for us, and, three of us in each car, we 
moved slowly away for St. George's Hospital. 
The streets were black with people, and they 



226 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

cheered us as we passed, and threw cigarettes 
and flowers into the cars. Men stood with 
bared heads as we went by, and many a woman 
had her handkerchief to her eyes. There was 
good cause for their tears, for more than one 
poor lad among us was near to death and knew 
nothing of the welcome he was getting as we 
moved on through the shadows of the great 
buildings. 

At the hospital the nurses made much of me. 
They treated me as if I were only a child, and 
each of them gave me a kiss, though it was lit- 
tle of the child that was left in me after the 
life in the trenches. There was an American 
doctor there, Dr. Eansom, who told me he had 
no doubt that I was the youngest soldier in the 
British Army, and it may have been so. I knew 
I had been the youngest at Ypres and also at 
Arras, and, though I had heard of one or two' 
lads under age who were in the war, they were 
older than I. 

The whole city was ours from the day we 
arrived. Perhaps we should soon be forgot- 
ten, but for those days we lay in the hospital 
we were heroes, honoured and admired. The 
Lord Mayor came to see us, and he gave me a 



I MEET THE KING 227 

one-pound note, besides distributing pipes, to- 
bacco and cigarettes among the rest. Then a 
company of the Black Watch paid us a visit and 
talked with us of our life at the front. One day 
we had a concert, when some famous actors 
joined in entertaining us. Being wounded was 
not so bad after all. 

For almost three months I lay there in the 
hospital. When at last I was able to get to my 
feet again there was no uniform that could be 
found to fit me. My old one had been burned 
up, so I had to stay indoors until a nurse one 
day brought me a new one made to my measure. 
It fitted like a glove, and that night I went to 
a great ball at the Lord Mayor's house to which 
five hundred soldiers from the hospitals had 
been invited. 

Oh, that was a sight worth seeing, stranger to 
me than the trenches or the battlefields and more 
full of interest. It was nearer to being a palace 
than any place I had ever been in. All ablaze 
with lights it was. Hundreds of beautiful 
women were dancing, and everywhere were of- 
ficers of high rank, their breasts covered with 
decorations, with now and then the greatest 
prize of all, the Victoria Cross, among them. 



228 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

and there were tables piled high with food and 
sweets in great dishes of silver and gold. 

Then a new order came that as the soldiers in 
the hospitals received no pay they could go to 
any theatre free. I lost no time in going to 
Drnry Lane with a nurse, where we saw ^ ' Seven 
Days' Leave.'' When it wasn't the theatre it 
was a motor drive or a football game, and wher- 
ever we went the crowds cheered us and show- 
ered us with cigarettes and flowers. 

Oh, London was good to us wounded Tom- 
mies ! London had a big heart and remembered 
what we had been through in mud and rain 
among the bullets and the shells. 



CHAPTER XXX 

THE LAST ADVENTURE 

AT last came my discharge from the army 
as unfit for service, and I went home 
with fifty-six pounds in my pocket and the prom- 
ise of a pension of a pound a week. 

As I came to Amelia Street, my eyes busy 
with all the old, familiar sights, I brushed 
against a stout young chap who was leaning 
against a wall eating cookies out of a paper 
bag. It was Jimmie Kelly, a lad who had been 
a pal of mine when we went to school together. 

* ' Hello ! ' * he said. * * I hear you 've been in the 
war.^' 

'*I^m just back from it,'' I answered, and 
pointed to the service medal on my coat. 

**And did you see any of the fighting T' he 
asked. 

I had to laugh at him. Did I see any of the 
fighting! I told him I had killed a few Ger- 
mans myself, and had lain wounded for forty- 
eight hours out in No Man's Land. 



230 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

*^ Are ye fooling T' says he. 

I showed him the wound on my head, and his 
eyes grew bigger and bigger. 

I left him standing there, and when I turned 
around for another look at him he had dropped 
the bag of cookies on the walk and was staring 
after me with his mouth open. I was begin- 
ning to find out what it was like to be coming 
home a hero, and I threw my chest out and held 
my head high as I marched up to the old house 
where I knew my mother was waiting. The 
door flew open, and there she stood, with her 
arms held out for me. It was the greatest day 
of her life, she said, and, though she had visited 
me in the hospital, she couldn't look at me 
enough nor hear too much of all that I had been 
through. 

In the evening many of the neighbours came 
in, and I had to tell my story all over again. 
Old Mr. Kelly, who was past eighty if he was a 
day, and fairly deaf, sat close in front of me, his 
whiskers almost in my face and a hand to his 
ear. When I had got through with what we 
had done at Ypres and with how the shells and 
bullets and bayonets had more than once come 
near to wiping us out, he piped up, ^ * But did ye 



THE LAST ADVENTURE 231 

see any of the fighting, lad ! ' ' And I had to tell 
it once more, shouting it into his ear. 

One day I happened to be at the Sailors' 
Home, where a ship's officer asked me to take 
a job with him. I asked where the ship was 
going. 

^^To the United States,'' said he. ^^ She's 
the Cuthbert, of the Booth line. We need a 
coal passer. You'll do." 

^'I'll go," I said, and the next day we sailed, 
although my mother warned me again that I 
should keep away from the sea. 

There were three other coal passers on the 
Cuthbert, We worked in shifts, two of us to 
a shift, four hours on and eight off. No army 
mules ever worked harder than we did, as we 
rolled barrels of coal from the bunkers to the 
fires. 

Stripped to the waist we were, and dripping 
wet with the heat. When I thought I could 
stand it no longer the fires would send a hotter 
wave than ever over me, till my head grew dizzy 
and I gasped for a breath of cool air; never a 
moment for even a word, for the fires were al- 
ways hungry for more. 

The two of us were black with coal dust from 



232 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

our hair to the waist-line, with only the whites 
of our eyes showing through all the grime. The 
lads of the *^ Scruffy Fifth'' should have seen 
me then. We had been clean — white as snow — 
in the trenches at Ypres compared with what I 
was down there in the bunkers. 

At last the shift would change, and old Peter, 
the man who worked with me on the job, would 
go with me to the deck to cool off. For a time I 
would lie there half dead from the hard work 
and the heat, but old Peter had been a coal 
passer since he was a boy and didn't mind it a 
bit. He had never known what any other kind 
of a job was. Almost all his life he had spent 
down in the hold of a ship. I showed him my 
service badge and my discharge papers, and 
told him of what I had seen of the war and of 
my meeting with the King. 

^^And King George shook your 'and?" said 
old Peter. 

^^He did that," said I. 

He puffed his pipe for a few moments with- 
out a word. Then he held out his hand to me. 

^^Boy, I'm askin' ye to let me shake the 'and 
that shook the 'and of the King," he said. 
** 'TwiU be something to remember." 



THE LAST ADVENTURE 233 

One day we were up on deck resting, when 
suddenly old Peter jumped to his feet. 

^^Look, lad!" he cried. '^They're after 

us!'' 

Off a few hundred yards or so I saw a sub- 
marine rising like a whale out of the water. 
Then we saw the wake of a torpedo. There 
were two ships behind us, and from one of them 
came the sound of an explosion. In the same 
moment our gunners began to fire, and we put 
on full steam to run for safety. 

The stern of the ship that had been struck 
was dipping deep into the water. She was 
sinking; there was no doubt of that, but it was 
against orders to stop to help her. We should 
have been sunk ourselves if we had done so. 

The next minute another torpedo came rush- 
ing through the water headed straight for us. 

**It's going to get us," cried Peter; and I 
thought he was right and made up my mind to 
jump into the sea. I held my breath as I 
watched the thing coming. We were going fast, 
and there was just a chance that it might miss 
us, but it looked to me as if it were going to 
strike amidships. 
It missed us. We saw it pass our stem, not 



234 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

ten yards away. And in the same moment the 
sinking ship behind us shot out a great cloud 
of steam and dropped out of sight like a stone. 

A shell came screeching over our decks ; then 
another, and again we thought we were lost. 
But we were giving the Germans as good as 
they sent, and they were beginning to submerge. 
In the next minute the danger was over. 

We learned that word had reached our cap- 
tain that the sea ahead of us was full of danger, 
and we turned far out of our course to get 
around the waiting submarines. The next day 
old Peter told me we were headed south and 
were already off our path by at least a hundred 
miles. 

More than a week late because of the round- 
about course we had taken, we steamed into New 
York Harbour on a clear, sunny morning, and 
the Statue of Liberty and the skyscrapers lay 
before us like stage scenery. 

Not a soul did I know in America, and after 
leaving the ship I roamed the streets feeling 
lonely and a bit homesick, not knowing where 
to go or what to do next. At last I came to a 
crowd of people, who were listening to a sol- 
dier making a speech. I edged my way up to 



THE LAST ADVENTURE 235 

the front, and before long the speaker caught 
sight of the service badge on my coat. 

^^I'U bet that chap has been in the war,'' he 
called out. *^Come up here and tell this crowd 
what you've seen, and help the Eed Cross 
drive. ' ' 

So I climbed up the steps to where he stood. 
Little I knew what to say, and I began to shake 
with stage fright as I saw all the people star- 
ing at me. 

^^ Brace up, sport," said the man who had 
asked me up, **and if you've seen any fighting 
tell 'em about it. That 's the stuff they want. ' ' 

All in a breath my thoughts went back to the 
trenches and to the long marches, and I told 
them of how we had fought at Ypres and Arras, 
of the homeless women and children and of the 
nurse who had lost her hands. They cheered 
and shouted for more, and men and women went 
down into their pockets to give to the Red Cross 
fund. 

When the meeting was over the soldier took 
me in tow and introduced me to a lot of peo- 
ple, and I became a regular speaker for the Red 
Cross and the Liberty Loan. One evening after 
I had been telling my story a red-headed chap 



236 THE FIGHTING MASCOT 

came up to me and said lie had a cousin in the 
Fifth Liverpool named McBride. He asked if 
I knew him. 

**Sure I know him,'^ I said. ^^It was from 
thinking of all he told me about his bear hunt- 
ing and gold digging that I made up my mind to 
come to America. He's been a great hunter 
of big game, that lad. ' ' 

*^Yeah?" said the red-headed man. ^^Why, 
son, that cousin of mine is the darnedest liar 
that ever came down the pike. The only big 
game he's ever seen is muskrats up on the old 
farm. He's never been west of Hackensack." 

So perhaps I won't go bear-hunting or gold 
digging after all, though I am still hunting for 
adventure. 

It's the life in the old trenches that is calling 
me now, and glad I should be to go back to it. 
But I am on the wounded list as unfit for service. 
Whenever I am alone my mind turns to Billy, 
and Piccadilly and the rest of the lads I knew, 
and I grow sad thinking that I shall never be 
with them there again and that my fighting days 
are over for good and all. 

Often at night queer dreams come to me, and 
I am with them in the fighting lines once more 



THE LAST ADVENTURE 237 

and I hear the big guns going as we lie in the 
mud and rain. And sometimes, when the shell 
shock that came to me at Arras has been shaking 
up my nerves a bit, I start up from my sleep, 
groping in the dark for my gun, with the voices 
of the Tommies in the stone house ringing in my 
ears: 
' ' Put the steel to 'im ! Put the steel to 'im ! ' ' 



THE END 



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